This year’s theme, “Taking Action on Migration and Development – Coherence, Capacity and Cooperation”, is about as vague as it is grandiose. More so from the viewpoint of migrant organizations, it is a worrisome proposition, since it has been very clear from the beginning that the GFMD views labor migration more as a capital-flow concern than as one of human rights. Before it brandishes abstract slogans about taking action, the GFMD should first rethink its current approach to migration.
Obsessed with finding ways to utilize remittances for “development”, the GFMD has remained largely silent on the need to institutionalize decent work policies at both ends of the migration flow. Its vagueness on migrant rights protection has been very telling especially on those of foreign domestic workers (FDWs), who experience the most difficulty in organizing to protect their own rights. Despite the landmark passage of the ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers in June 2011, the GFMD has not acknowledged, much less crafted any plan to promote the Convention’s ratification by governments that attend its meetings.
As a campaign network for the rights of FDWs and migrant workers in general, the United for Foreign Domestic Workers’ Rights (UFDWR) urges the GFMD to deliver the following policy changes:
- Reorient its approach from a monetary- to a rights-based one, thereby putting migrant workers’ interests to the fore. We believe that the focus of GFMD meetings should shift from the remittance discourse towards finding ways to protect migrant human rights in the short term, and adopting common strategies that deal with social factors behind forced labor migration in the long-term.
- Encourage governments attending GFMD meetings to ratify and enforce the ILO Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention 189, beginning with that of Switzerland which abstained from voting for the Convention’s passage in the last International Labour Conference (ILC). This is one form of “taking action” that will be much welcomed by FDWs everywhere, and will create the necessary legal and political environment for promoting their rights and welfare.
- Appeal to governments to remove unjust exactions on migrants, primarily through the elimination of the role of recruitment and placement agencies; and secondarily, through reduction or outright abolition of processing fees, including the cancellation of requirements that are extortionate in nature and that merely create conditions for debt-bondage among migrant workers.
- Restructure the GFMD’s operating modalities and programs to favor migrant organizations, especially those that are at the grassroots. The Forum should strive for at least 50% representation of migrant organizations, the selection of which should be based on proven track-record of advocacy and grounding among self-organized migrant organizations in both sending and receiving countries.
The UFDWR believes that mounting stakeholder skepticism on the relevance of the GFMD calls for a fundamental rethinking not only in the way that it operates, but even more importantly, of its ideological assumptions on the migration and development discourse. Its analysis of a “creative nexus” between forced labor migration and development strategies manifests its inverted perception of objective social realities, in that forced migration is evidence of – and exacerbates – historic underdevelopment in sending-countries. Rather than addressing the roots of such systemic failures, the policy line of “migration for development” further undermines the capacity of these countries to retool their economies towards greater self-reliance and strategic sustainability.
The fact that the GFMD has made such a mediocre impact in the labor migration process speaks volumes on the futility of its current avowed mission. At this stage of the discourse, the most relevant role that the GFMD can assume is to act as a body that finds ways to protect migrants and ensures that their sectoral demands figure significantly in decisions made by governments and other institutional stakeholders. For the GFMD to “take action” towards this direction is something that the UFDWR and other migrant advocates will applaud and support to the fullest. #
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