Law report
Rights on the line
In 2010, international migration helped fuel economies across the globe. More than 215 million people live outside their country of birth, according to the United Nations, while migrants sent home more than US$440 billion in 2010, $325 billion of which went to developing countries, according to World Bank estimates.
The benefits and relative stability of remittances compared to other forms of foreign direct investment means that many development authorities and governments tout them as a promising form of development.
However, international migration has also sparked contentious political debate about control of irregular immigration, discrimination against migrant workers, and their integration into host countries. While some migrants have thrived, current immigration practices and massive protection gaps have exposed many others to a range of human rights abuses, including labour exploitation, violence, trafficking, mistreatment in detention, and even killings. Often viewing migrants as undesirable, many host governments make minimal effort to measure the social costs of migration for workers and their families, particularly regarding family unity; abuses during the migration process; or discrimination, exploitation, and limited access to redress that migrants may face in their host countries.
Human Rights Watch conducted fact-finding investigations throughout 2010, and released 12 in-depth research reports and dozens of public statements on human rights abuses against migrants. The report includes documentation of abuses against migrant workers, primarily in low-wage sectors such as domestic work, agriculture, and construction; violations of the right to health while in detention, including access to HIV and TB testing and treatment; limited investigations into abuse against migrants; trafficking; and overly restrictive entry, screening, and immigration detention policies that expose migrants to abuse, extortion, and violence at border crossings.
December 18, 2010, marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families (CMW). Only 44 countries were party to the treaty as of November 2010, despite its critical role in elaborating states' responsibilities toward migrants. The majority of these are “migrant-sending” countries: countries that host large numbers of migrants, particularly the United States, Gulf, and European countries have resisted adopting those obligations.
While commitment to the international standards outlined in the CMW is important, a full range of migrants' rights are protected in other, more broadly-ratified, international human rights treaties, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the UN Refugee Convention; and the UN Trafficking Protocol.
Governments must do more to ensure that national laws and enforcement complies with their international human rights obligations to protect migrants' rights, and should take greater steps to forge cohesion between immigration and labour laws that are too often discordant, imperiling the protections to which migrants workers are entitled, and even endangering their lives.
Migrant workers in the agriculture and domestic sectors are often at particular risk of abuse due to weak labour protections and monitoring. In the United States, labour laws exclude child farm workers from minimum age and maximum hour requirements: as a result, many often work up to 14 hours a day and drop out of school.
While many governments are beginning to engage in a reform process, they have generally failed to foster the sustained international dialogue and cooperation necessary to protect these workers.
Indeed, it is the private sector, at times in collaboration with governments that have produced some of the most promising initiatives and commitments. These include agreements from New York University, the Guggenheim Foundation, and their government-owned partners regarding strengthened labour contracts for workers involved in constructing their campus and museum buildings in the United Arab Emirates, as well as improved work contracts for workers producing tobacco for Philip Morris Kazakhstan, a subsidiary of Philip Morris International, one of the world's largest tobacco companies.
Migration, whether to seek employment in low-wage sectors or to flee instability in home countries, remains a risky enterprise often undertaken with few protections and at great personal and financial cost. Men, women, and children may risk their lives to cross borders and face danger while in grey areas, such as between border checkpoints, on the high seas, or in the international zones of airports. For example, between January and November 2010, Egyptian border guards shot dead at least 28 migrants who attempted to cross the Sinai border into Israel. Between 2000 and June 2010, India's Border Security Force (BSF) killed at least 924 Bangladeshi nationals trying to cross the border between the two countries, according to Odhikar, a Bangladesh human rights monitoring group.
Vulnerable populations crossing borders, including asylum-seekers, refugees, trafficking victims, and unaccompanied children often get caught up in migration policies that fail to adequately distinguish between the “mixed flows” crossing borders. Instead of being offered special status and protections, governments may treat such individuals as immigration offenders through summary deportation, or re-victimization through systems of immigration arrest, detention, and deportation. For example, Egypt denied UNHCR access to detained refugees and migrants arrested in the Sinai peninsula, preventing them from making asylum claims. Italy and Libya patrol waters near their borders to interdict boat migrants and return them summarily to Libya without screening.
Human Rights Watch documented several forms of trafficking, including boys sent to Senegal to study who are then forced to beg for as many as 10 hours a day, Nigerian women and girls forced into prostitution in Côte d'Ivoire, and Nepalese women in domestic servitude in Saudi Arabia. Across these diverse situations, victims were trapped by deception about the conditions they would face abroad as students or as workers, as well as limited options for escaping highly exploitative situations.
Government response to such situations remains haphazard, with an urgent need for more comprehensive protection strategies, including improved international cooperation to prevent and respond to trafficking, as well as strengthened support services for survivors.
Racism and xenophobic violence against migrants remain problems that governments are not only slow to acknowledge and tackle appropriately, but in some cases even aggravate by adopting policies that exacerbate discrimination. Precarious migration status, language barriers, isolation, and limited access to services can compound these abuses and further limit workers' access to redress.
Several European countries adopted and maintained immigration policies that inhibit effective access to asylum procedures and processing of applications. Individuals may also face mistreatment in detention, for which there is little accountability.
Migrants frequently face barriers to health care. Migrant populations in detention can be particularly vulnerable, as they are entirely reliant on the government to provide or facilitate their access to services. Under international law, states are obligated to ensure medical care for all prisoners at least equivalent to that available to the general population; human rights law also requires that a core minimum of health care services be provided without discrimination on the basis of citizenship or social origin. Yet despite these protections, prisoners in various countries, including Zambia and Malawi, are often held in life-threatening conditions. Human Rights Watch researchers found that migrant detainees held in prisonssometimes inappropriately or unnecessarilyalso experience discrimination, such as inferior conditions or health care to that provided to non-migrant prison populations.
On September 30, 2010, the Global Migration Groupcomprising 12 UN agencies, the World Bank, and the International Organization of Migration (IOM)adopted a statement on migrants who do not have a recognised valid immigration status, noting that,
Migrants in an irregular situation are more likely to face discrimination, exclusion, exploitation and abuse at all stages of the migration process…. Too often, States have addressed irregular migration solely through the lens of sovereignty, border security or law enforcement, sometimes driven by hostile domestic constituencies…. The irregular situation which international migrants may find themselves in should not deprive them either of their humanity or of their rights.
Two decades after the UN General Assembly adopted the CMW much remains to be done by countries of origin, transit, and destination to prevent and respond to human rights abuses against migrants.
This is the abridged version of the report, Rights on the Line, Human Rights Watch.
