The Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights joins migrants and migrants’ rights advocates worldwide in a celebration of the second annual International Migrants Day. In an era when policies and public discussions regarding migrants are largely shaped by economic, and, increasingly, national security concerns, December 18 represents an opportunity to call attention to the human rights of migrants and the need to take action to protect them. It is also a day to recognize the multiple contributions migrants make to receiving and sending countries alike.

Current U.N. estimates indicate that about one in fifty human beings worldwide currently reside outside of his or her country of origin as refugees or migrants. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that migrants send more than $70 billion dollars a year to families in their home countries. This capital flow, which gets directly to people in need, is greater than all governmental aid to developing nations.

On December 18, 1990, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the U.N. Migrant Workers Convention (formerly known as the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families). The adoption of this convention marked a significant breakthrough because it explicitly recognizes that migrants are more than economic entities. They are entitled to all the rights - political, economic, and social- guaranteed all human beings by international law. The convention recognizes the responsibility of the international community to articulate and uphold certain standards of protection for all migrant workers and their families.

However, eleven years after its adoption by the U.N., only 17 countries have ratified the convention. Most of those countries are sending countries, including Mexico (the world’s largest migrant-sending country), the Philippines (the world’s second largest migrant-sending country), Belize, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Colombia, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Uganda. The world’s largest migrant receiving countries - including the U.S.- have not ratified it.

In spite of many governments’ resistance to this campaign, however, international and regional networks of civil society organizations concerned with promoting the human rights of migrants have been strengthened over the past decade. The campaign for an International Migrants Day was initiated four years ago by the Philippine Migrants Rights Watch and the Asian Partnership in International Migration. In April of 2000, Mexico submitted a formal resolution to the U.N. to declare an International Migrants Rights Day. The resolution was approved by the U.N. General Assembly on December 4, 2000.

Heartland Alliance International Programs focus on strengthening civil society networks throughout Central and North America in order to promote the human rights of migrants in the region. In spite of their contributions to sending and receiving countries, migrants throughout North and Central America - like migrants throughout the world - are vulnerable to a wide range of human rights violations. The Regional Network of Civil Organizations on Migration (RNCOM), a civil society network of organizations concerned with the human rights of migrants, published in March of 2001 a report on the human rights of migrants in situations of arrest, detention, deportation, and reception in RNCOM member countries. As that report documents, migrants throughout the region face - among other human rights violations - arbitrary arrest; indefinite detention; inconsistent access to health care and poor physical conditions in detention centers, and a lack of access to due process guarantees during the deportation process.

The Regional Network of Civil Organizations on Migration (RNCOM) is in the process of developing a set of regional human rights guidelines for the treatment of migrants in situations of arrest, detention, deportation, and reception. These guidelines, which are based in international and regional human rights frameworks, will be presented to Central and North American governments next year.

As it joins the voices of migrants, migrants’ advocates, and civil society networks worldwide today, the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights commends the governments of Central and North America for their work on the development of those human rights guidelines through the Regional Conference on Migration and reaffirms the importance of the adoption of this regional document. Implementing these guidelines will not resolve entirely the persistent state of vulnerability in which millions of migrants - whose labor is essential to the economic viability of the region - currently reside. However, it will mark an important step towards the fulfillment of regional governments’ international obligation to protect migrants and towards the enactment of policies and practices reflective of the multiple benefits migrants bring to the region.

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