By Grace Baey
Amidst my conversations with fellow colleagues from civil
society, I was heartened to learn from those who had attended previous Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) meetings
that there has been a marked shift in discourse over the past six years from a
predominant focus on economic concerns (i.e. remittances) towards a growing
emphasis on migrant rights.
The 2012 GFMD marked the second time that civil society and
governments shared a "common space" through which to engage in
face-to-face dialogue on migration and development issues. As noted by
Ambassador William Lacy Swing, Director General of the International
Organisation for Migration (IOM), "the Common Space is now a permanent
fixture of the GFMD… In the past, we were ships that passed by the night along
parallel courses. Now those days are over."
I participated in three working sessions on the theme on
labour mobility, markets, and matching, including the common space dialogue
with government representatives. Each working session featured a panel of
speakers who shared different insights and best practices learned from their
range of experience on various migration issues. Amongst these were Philip
Hunter from Verité, Christine Kuptsch from the International Labour Organisation (ILO),
and Karl Flecker from the Canadian Labour Congress.
During the working sessions, we were pushed to put pen to
paper regarding the changes we felt were most urgently needed to improve
recruitment and employment practices, as well as skills and jobs matching from
the perspective of migrant workers, trade unions, and employers. Some of these
included:
- Strong licensing and regulation of recruitment that is effectively enforced, and clearly identifies the rights of workers and responsibilities of all parties;
- Harmonisation and recognition of credentials; and
- Promote employer investment in training that is relevant to the labour market.
Having identified these changes, we brainstormed different tools
and mechanisms to operationalise these recommendations and proposed the
following benchmarks:
- Reduction in the number of brokers and intermediaries, and instances of illegal recruitment;
- Increased ratification of UN and ILO Conventions, including ILO Convention 181;
- Programmes to ensure that migrants are matched with jobs according to their training (to avoid de-skilling); and
- Creating public employment agencies to assist in the placement of migrant workers.
These discussions helped to inform the common space dialogue
on the third day, when civil society representatives were given the opportunity
to speak first. Despite the brief time we shared, it was our hope that these
exchanges would sow the seeds for a much-needed partnership towards achieving the
common goal of improving the lives of migrants around the world. As Stefan
Manservisi, Director General for Home Affairs of the European Commission, has rightly
commented, "The common space should be turned into a common
approach."
There is much work to do ahead of us, but I take heart in
Khalid Koser's (Deputy Director, Geneva Centre for Security Policy) affirmation
that "the sum of the GFMD dialogue is more than the total of its
individual parts." To quote the words of George Joseph, Co-Chair of the
GFMD Civil Society Days, in his closing speech, "We are here today not for
ourselves. We are here for change."
Grace Baey is the Communications Officer for the Asia Research Institute at the
National University of Singapore, one of the core partners within the Migrating
out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium. Grace was attending the Global
Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) Civil Society Days 2012 supported by
the Migrating out of Poverty RPC.
