On International Migrants’ Day: A Call for Migration With Dignity

16 December | by Frances House

International Migrants' Day (18 December 2011) is a time to take stock of the state of migrant worker rights around the world.

Migrant construction labourers in Dubai line up to board a bus which will take them back to their labour camp, 2 hours away, after working a 12-hour shift in extreme temperatures. Most earn less than $200 per month.

We know from World Bank statistics that more than 215 million international migrants living outside their countries of origin play a vital role in the global economy.

Recorded remittances received by developing countries, estimated to be US$325 billion in 2010, far exceed the volume of official aid flows and constitute more than 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in many developing countries.

But it is also true that the vast majority of migrants today are low-paid workers in industries ranging from apparel, electronics and construction to agriculture, hospitality, and domestic service.

From the point of recruitment, through employment and to the point of return home, migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation. Protection mechanisms to safeguard their rights continue to be wholly inadequate and access to legal remedy is poor in both host and home countries.

Despite growing public awareness of their plight, migrant workers face a terrible range of abuses that require urgent action. From debt bondage arising from excessive recruitment fees to an inability to leave an abusive employer and seek work elsewhere because of confiscated passports, from forced and unpaid overtime, to being prohibited from joining a trade union, and from unsanitary and cramped dormitories, to false promises, bogus job offers and fake contracts, not to mention trafficking (particularly of women), – these and many other violations of fundamental rights are well documented from Malaysia to Dubai, China to the UK.

As fighting took place in and around the Libyan capital of Tripoli, thousands of migrant workers from Egypt, Tunisia and other countries fled to the Tunisian border to escape the violence. Photo: Spencer Platt

The past year saw tens of thousands of migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and elsewhere stranded in Libya as conflict spread and employers closed factories, plants and construction sites.

These workers were abandoned to fend for themselves in a highly volatile situation.

Their repatriation was orchestrated by UNHCR and IOM in the majority of cases, shining a light on the pressing question of where responsibility lies for protecting migrants at a time of crisis – employer or home government, assuming the host government is unwilling or unable to take any responsibility for their welfare or safe passage.

In 2011 we also witnessed an important step forward in the unanimous endorsement by the UN Human Rights Council of the ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ Framework and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – combining the state duty under international and national law to protect citizens (whether at home or abroad), the responsibility of companies to respect the rights of those their operations affect, and the need for access to judicial and non-judicial remedy to seek redress for violations of rights.

The UN ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ Framework is important in the business of migration in helping clarify where responsibilities lie for the protection of workers recruited in their home country to work overseas. Home governments have a legal duty to protect their citizens at home and abroad, host governments have a legal obligation to protect workers employed in their territory, while employers have a legal obligation and moral responsibility to respect the rights of their employees enshrined in national labour law, international labour conventions, and industry good practice. And yet exploitation remains prevalent all along the labour supply chain.

We need leadership from responsible companies, willing to speak out for decent work for migrants and against profit in their industry being built on the back of cheap, exploited labour; we need sending governments negotiating stronger bilateral agreements with receiving governments to safeguard migrant workers’ rights and we need better regulation of the recruitment industry with enforcement of the law and prosecution by governments of rogue labour brokers and others intent on exploiting the particular vulnerabilities of migrant workers.

The work of IHRB’s Business and Migration programme during 2011 made us hopeful that consensus around the actions needed to better protect migrant worker rights was finally coming together.

In Dhaka, Bangladesh in June 2011 as well as at previous consultations in London, Mauritius and Malaysia, we found growing agreement around the need for a set of principles for responsible migration. While abundant codes of conduct exist at different stages in the migration cycle, no coherent set of human rights principles, which follows the worker from recruitment through to safe return, is currently in place to provide a common framework for all actors working in this area.

The Dhaka Principles for Migration with Dignity aim to provide a clear and concise framework for business, government and civil society to enhance due diligence in labour supply chains and improve migrant worker protection in both sending and receiving countries.

In response, IHRB has been developing the Dhaka Principles for Migration with Dignity. Based on ILO conventions and other key human rights instruments, the Dhaka Principles aim to provide a clear and concise framework for business, government and civil society to enhance due diligence in labour supply chains and improve migrant worker protection in both sending and receiving countries.

We are inviting feedback on the Dhaka Principles (up to 15th Feb to ) from a wide range of important stakeholders.

We are not asking companies and others to ‘sign up’ to the principles. We do, however, hope they will become a common reference point for all parties involved in labour migration, whether at the recruitment, employment or sourcing stages of the chain or in regulating and enforcing adherence to national labour law and international labour standards.

The Dhaka Principles are not a set of ‘how to’ guidelines. Rather, we hope each stakeholder will apply them according to their constituency.

We anticipate, in due course, they can become a widely shared benchmark, used in management training with suppliers, referred to in contracts with suppliers or labour brokers, in auditing tools, in trade union and NGO capacity-building, in government regulation, enforcement and in bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries.

Regardless of geography or industry sector, migrant workers’ rights must be protected in accordance with national law and international labour standards. Governments, business and civil society need to work together to restore dignity and decency to this crucial part of the global workforce.

The economic contribution of migrant workers around the world is immense. Ensuring their rights and dignity is the least they should expect in return.