FOR A JUST AND HUMANE WORLD WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

01 July 2003 marks the achievement of over a decade-long struggle of migrants' advocates across the region and the world for the entry into force of the 1990 International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. This seventh core human rights convention of the United Nations enforces the need to properly protect the rights of migrant workers and their families.

For almost two decades now, migrant workers and their advocates have been faced with the challenge of asserting their right to a just migration regime, while governments have largely been reluctant to institute such national policies. Host governments do not want to spend extra resources to provide fair and equal labour and social welfare benefits to migrants. On the other hand sending countries are mostly reluctant to assert the protection of their nationals, fearing the loss of their share of invaluable migrant remittances provided by the international labour trade.

Migrant workers' rights have been upheld by a variety of international instruments, however, none of these instruments has comprehensively provided for the protection of migrant workers` economic, social, political, cultural and labour rights from the pre-migration, to the on-site and the reintegration phases of modern-day labour migration.

As there seems to be a "race to the bottom," with the increasing erosion of migrants' rights and safety in the current context of globalization and worldwide economic recession, governments are faced with little pressure to bring improvements to the plight migrants. While international instruments by themselves are not a complete solution to migrants' problems, they can be used as a powerful pressure tool to insist for governments' adherence to international standards.

The coming into force of the Migrants Convention would not have been possible without the combined efforts of various UN agencies, some governments, and the Global Steering Committee for the Ratification of the Migrants Convention, of which Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) is a member. MFA is a regional network of advocates that are committed to the protection and promotion of the human rights and welfare of Asian migrant workers. Conceived in 1990 in a meeting of migrant workers` advocates in Hong Kong, MFA was formally organized in 1994 at the 2nd Regional Conference, "Living and Working together with Migrants in Asia," in Taiwan. MFA's membership
is made up of over 200 migrant workers' associations, trade unions, organizations of the families of migrant workers and support NGOs that are based in over 20 countries in Asia and the Gulf region. MFA members in Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines and Bangladesh are among those who have been actively participating in national and region-wide campaign efforts towards ratification.

Now that the convention has entered into force, we demand that all Asian governments take serious steps towards the ratification and implementation of the Convention, using it as a tool for the creation of protective, rights-based policies and practices for genuine peace, security and
development of host and sending countries.

As long as migrant workers, migrants' advocates and governments continue working towards universal ratification and full adherence to the Convention, we can only move closer towards migrant workers' and their families' enjoyment of dignity and freedom from discrimination.

*** 000 ***