COMMITTEE ON THE PROTECTION OF RIGHTS OF MIGRANT WORKERS OPENS FOURTEENTH SESSION

The Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families this morning opened its fourteenth session, during which it will review the second periodic report of Mexico on how that country is fulfilling its obligations under the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. The Committee also heard an address by the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyung-Wha Kang, updating members on developments since their last session, and held a public meeting with non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions on Mexico.

In opening remarks, Ms. Kang said that migrants’ rights were currently facing major challenges. As stressed by the High Commissioner in her statements, the outbreak of turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa had had a very negative impact on the realization of human rights, and once again demonstrated the particular vulnerabilities of migrant workers. She noted with concern the repercussions of recent events on the rights of migrants, including unlawful and often dangerous interception practices at sea and land borders, violence, racism, and xenophobia. Thousands of migrant workers and members of their families had suffered violations of their economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights, which had resulted in humanitarian crises. The statement issued last month by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Libya highlighted the urgency of addressing the disproportionate impact of the crisis on African migrant workers in particular.

Ms. Kang went on to say that the critical situation in this region had demonstrated once again the importance of continuing to promote the international human rights standards relating to migration, as the High Commissioner did when chairing the Global Migration Group last year. The Committee members would recall that her focus at that time was the protection of migrant workers in irregular situations and that she had identified migration as one of the priority areas for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights over the next two years. Migration was the focus of several Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights activities, including a roundtable on alternatives to immigration detention which would be held in May this year.

In the ensuing discussion, Committee Experts said that the Committee should consider making a statement covering natural disasters and their effect on migrant workers. Another Committee Expert noted the involvement of organized crime in human trafficking and also expressed concern regarding countries stripping children of their citizenship even if they had been born in the country, because they were children of undocumented workers. They were seeing more stringent laws that were causing suffering for migrant workers and their families, some of whom were frightened to leave their homes to even go shopping.

Ms. Kang said that while it might be difficult to tie the provisions of the Convention to the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, she felt it was important for the treaty body Committees to speak out and use every opportunity they had to remind political leaders of their legal, moral and political obligations when it came to human rights and she encouraged the Committee to speak out under whatever means it could based on the provisions of the Convention.

The Committee then adopted its agenda and programme of work and members updated the Committee on activities they had undertaken between sessions.

During the discussion with non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions on the report of Mexico, speakers noted that human rights defenders were threatened and their rights violated for attempting to help migrants, there was large scale impunity for crimes committed against migrants and public officials were often involved in carrying out these crimes, and while Mexico had taken some measures to protect the rights of migrants the measures were insufficient and more needed to be done.

When the Committee reconvenes at 3 p.m. this afternoon it will begin consideration of the second periodic report of Mexico (CMW/C/MEX/2).

Statement by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights

KYUNG-WHA KANG, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, in an opening statement, said that 2011 would be a challenging year for treaty bodies and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Following the High Commissioner’s call for a process of reflection on ways and means to strengthen the treaty body system, an intensive process of consultations had been taking place which would continue in coming months. These events aimed to bring together individual groups of stakeholders to solicit their views and concrete suggestions on strengthening the treaty body system and making it more efficient and effective for rights holders worldwide.

At its sixty-fifth session in June, the General Assembly adopted various resolutions on the treaty bodies, including two approving requests for additional meeting time for two Committees, and several other Committees would also present requests for additional meeting time. Faced with such continuous requests, the General Assembly had requested the Secretary-General to submit concrete and tailored proposals to rationalize the work of the treaty bodies. The need for rationalization became clearer when observing the continuous growth in the size and workload of the treaty body system. Members were undoubtedly aware that on 23 December 2010, the twentieth instrument of ratification and accession to the Convention on Enforced Disappearances was deposited, which under the terms of the Convention required the establishment of a new monitoring Committee. The elections for the Committee on Enforced Disappearances were due to take place on 31 May 2011. On 19 April 2011 a new open-ended Working Group on the rights of older persons would meet in New York, bringing welcome attention to a gap in the human rights framework which might well result in a new instrument and monitoring body.

Turning to the task at hand, Ms. Kang said that the Committee had a very busy week ahead. They would hold a dialogue with Mexico and later in the week they would discuss and adopt the list of issues for the three States parties which were due to be reviewed at the next session: Argentina, Chile and Guatemala. Since the Committee’s last session, Tajikistan and Paraguay had submitted their initial reports. Within the short time available during this one week session, the Committee would also meet with different partners with a view to organizing a day of general discussion on issues related to the Convention and improving their collaboration with the Committee as well discuss working methods to advance the harmonization process.

Ms. Kang went on to say that migrants’ rights were currently facing major challenges. As stressed by the High Commissioner in her statements, the outbreak of turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa had had a very negative impact on the realization of human rights, and once again demonstrated the particular vulnerabilities of migrant workers. They noted with concern the repercussions of recent events on the rights of migrants, including unlawful and often dangerous interception practices at sea and land borders, violence, racism, and xenophobia. Thousands of migrant workers and members of their families had suffered violations of their economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights, which had resulted in humanitarian crises. The statement issued last month by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Libya highlighted the urgency of addressing the disproportionate impact of the crisis on African migrant workers in particular. The critical situation in this region had demonstrated once again the importance of continuing to promote the international human rights standards relating to migration, as the High Commissioner did when chairing the Global Migration Group last year. The Members would recall that her focus at that time was the protection of migrant workers in irregular situations and that she had identified migration as one of the priority areas for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights over the next two years. Migration was the focus of several Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights activities, including a roundtable on alternatives to immigration detention which would be held in May this year. Ms. Kang hoped to count on the participation of a member of the Committee.

In conclusion, Ms. Kang said that they would continue to closely follow and support the work of the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, the importance of which was underscored by recent events. She wished the Committee a very successful and productive session.

Discussion with Committee Members

ABDELHAMID EL JAMRI, Committee Chairperson, thanked Ms. Kang for her remarks and said that the Committee had been following all these developments very closely and stressed the importance of the current changes they were seeing in migratory flows around the world, the effects of the economic crisis on migration, and the impact of the turmoil in the Middle East on migrant workers and migration.

A Committee member said that the Committee should consider making a statement covering natural disasters and their effect on migrant workers. Another Committee Expert noted the involvement of organized crime in human trafficking and also expressed concern regarding countries stripping children of their citizenship even if they had been born in the country, because they were children of undocumented workers. They were seeing more stringent laws that were causing suffering for migrant workers and their families who were frightened to leave their homes to even go shopping.

Ms. Kang said that while it might be difficult to tie the provisions of the Convention to the situation in the Middle East and North Africa, she felt it was important for the treaty body Committees to speak out and use every opportunity that they had to remind political leaders of their legal, moral and political obligations when it came to human rights and she encouraged the Committee to speak out under whatever means it could based on the provisions of the Convention.

Statements by National Human Rights Institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations on Mexico

FERNANDO BAUTISTA JIMENEZ, of the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico, said that there had been positive steps taken by the Mexican Government to protect the rights of migrant workers such as the law on refugees, reforms to strengthen the combat against human trafficking and kidnapping, and training campaigns for public officials who dealt with migrants such as police officers. Much remained to be done, however, to combat physical and sexual abuse of migrant workers, attempts against their lives, and numerous other forms of exploitation. The National Human Rights Commission of Mexico was empowered to perform site visits to institutions that dealt with migrant workers as well as areas with high migrant populations. The Commission also accepted complaints from migrant workers. Migrants tended to be victims of robbery by officials and organized crime syndicates when they transited through the country, while in transit centres they experienced arbitrary use of force, a lack of translators and legal counselling, and restrictions on human rights defenders who provided care for migrant workers. Regarding repatriation procedures, it took a long time to work through the red tape which meant longer detention times. Human rights defenders had become the object of threats and they did not have any protection measures. Between 2006 and 2009 the National Human Rights Commission issued 15 protection measures to protect human rights defenders. The Mexican State needed to take urgent measures to protect these people so they could carry out their work freely and safely.

They were also working on setting up an international observatory to monitor migratory flows and to serve as an early warning system. Hopefully, this observatory would be operational in a few months. Violence against migrants was not abating but rather increasing, including violence from organized crime. These crimes were underreported because of the vulnerability of migrants and people were afraid to come forward to document violations of their rights. Often times there was collusion with public authorities so migrant workers also were afraid to report crimes because they did not trust the police. The legal framework also needed to take into account the mixed nature of migratory flows because it often included refuges, asylum seekers, victims of trafficking and migrant workers.

RUPERT KNOX, of Amnesty International, said that their report focused on abuses suffered by migrants while in transit in Mexico. They suffered from torture, rape and other forms of violence as well as robbery, extortion, and kidnapping. State officials were often implicated in those abuses by failing to investigate or take action or turning people over to these gangs when they were in detention. People were held captive and threatened if their families did not turn over money, usually within a matter of days. The scale of these abuses was industrial and countrywide, indicating national and trans-national crime structures. The scale of abuses had worsened in the last year and the measures taken had not been enough. The Government of Mexico would give a long list of measures taken, and these should not be discounted, but it was not enough.

Mr. Knox went on to say that access to justice was extremely weak and 1 per cent of migrants, if that, would file complaints, which meant that the State was blind to what was happening. Another issue was impunity. How many public officials had been held accountable for their complicity in these crimes? Mr. Knox said he was interested in hearing from Mexico about what was being done to combat this impunity. All the State agencies acted without coordination so how had this situation been improved? Mr. Knox said they needed information on the coordination, accountability and lines of control to combat officials and organized crime gangs that committed crimes as well as reliable national data that showed prosecutions and convictions. Human rights defenders were also at risk and the measures put in place by the State to protect them were insufficient. The measures that had been taken up were just for international consumption and lacked effectiveness.

Lastly, Mr. Knox asked what was the proactive stance of the Government toward migrants? The policies were ineffective in addressing the humanitarian crisis affecting migrants in Mexico.

MELISSA VERTIE, of the National Human Rights Network, said that the Government’s policy to date had been characterized by criminalizing migrants and human rights defenders. Migration was a shared responsibility of States of origin, transit and destination. They needed mechanisms that changed the behaviour toward migrants to combat extortion, mistreatment, robbery and death as well as racism and xenophobia. They needed to look at deprivation of liberty, excessive use of force, ignoring due process, access to justice, and respect for human rights. The lack of proper training in the legal system and impunity for officials left migrant workers defenceless, or they became victims of human trafficking, refugees and asylum seekers. Over the years they had also seen the criminalization of humanitarian aid and the defence of the rights of migrants.

CYNTHIA SALIM, of the International Catholic Migration Commission, said that it was essential that the State of Mexico recognize migrant victims of kidnapping as human beings who had been violated by a serious crime and any status as an undocumented migrant should not prevent them from obtaining protections and legal rights. A hesitance to report crimes out of fear of punitive immigration action prevented them from receiving the protection and redress to which they had a right, and also made the task of pursuing abusers more difficult as many victims were too afraid to provide law enforcement or even human rights defenders with important information. The International Catholic Migration Commission suggested that Mexico develop a legal practice of safe reporting whereby victims felt safe enough to report crimes regardless of their nationality or immigration status, and they encouraged the State to implement broad protection of basic rights to all migrant victims and witnesses of crime. The State was also urged to protect human rights defenders, to work bilaterally and multilaterally to protect the rights of Mexican citizens abroad.

JOSE ALEXANDRO SOLALINDE GUERRA, of the Pastoral Dimension of Human Mobility of the Catholic Church, said that while Mexico had enacted several laws for the protection of migrants, these were more for show and there was still evidence of mass kidnappings and impunity for crimes against migrants. There was evidence that the federal police had committed human rights violations and to date not a single public official had been tried for human rights violations or other crimes against migrants. There was complete and total impunity and this had to be stopped.


FLOR MARIA RIGONI, of the Scalabrini International Migration Network, said that in January 2011 Mexican President Felipe Calderon signed into law a new provision meant to bring Mexican asylum law into line with international standards. The law included important principles such as non-refoulement, non-discrimination, no penalty for irregular entry, family unity, best interest of the child and confidentiality. In February 2011 the Mexican Senate passed a comprehensive immigration law decriminalizing the presence of undocumented migrants in Mexico. Scalabrini International Migration Network said it was concerned about the implementation of the new law for refugees, the chronic lack of personnel, the long processing times for asylum seekers, and the low number of people granted asylum status. They suggested that Mexico affect a shift in the language of migration, defining who was a migrant, who was a foreigner passing through, and who was the possible member of a criminal organization. In addition, impunity and corruption of public officials had to end and a culture of dignity, responsibility and honesty had to be fostered while better coordination of all government agencies and bodies needed to be implemented in order to effectively combat crimes against migrants.

Discussion with Committee Members

Committee members asked whether the Mexican authorities complied with the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission. Did both the federal and state authorities comply with these recommendations and to what extent? How involved were local officials in protecting the human rights of migrants? How effective was the new law decriminalizing undocumented workers? If this was no longer a crime, how could these people still be detained? Was the legislation having an affect on the mentality of people, such as authorities charged with enforcing the law?

Another Committee member expressed concern about the information given by several speakers regarding the involvement of government officials in crimes against migrant workers; this complicity and collusion was alarming. In the State party’s report they highlighted the amount of training given to public officials so these charges of violations of migrants’ rights by authorities was very disturbing. What had non-governmental organizations done to address the situation?

Regarding the migration observatory, how would this be implemented in practice? It had been recently approved and everyone knew what it was supposed to do in theory, but how would it work in practice? The murder of 12 Guatemalans who were killed Talmaipas was worrying. Who was responsible, organized crime or civil servants, and what had been done to bring the perpetrators to justice?

FERNANDO BATISTA JIMENEZ, of the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico, said that in terms of compliance with their recommendations, out of more than 1,000 complaints the Commission had only made 27 recommendations for very serious violations. They had also launched investigations with the Migratory Institute into charges that migration officials had acted improperly. Once recommendations were issued, first they had to be accepted and some were not, and the next step was compliance which meant the federal authorities had to sanction those who had acted improperly and this was not always done. So there was a gap between acceptance and compliance. There was a lack of coordination between federal agencies and federal and state authorities. The National Ombudsman had the right to take cases directly to the Supreme Court so any new laws that were passed could be taken to the court if the Ombudsman felt they were unconstitutional.

RUPERT KNOX, of Amnesty International, said that some local jurisdictions had been successful in investigating crimes against migrants. There was a gap between official data in terms of crimes against migrants and the actual number of crimes, and there needed to be more reliable data in order to design better policies. Authorities were not required to say whether they had complied with the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission, so while they may trumpet the number of recommendations they had accepted there was no indication of how many prosecutions had been brought or how many people had been charged and convicted for crimes.

MELISSA VERTIE, of the National Human Rights Network, said it was worth focusing on some specific points including their prime concern that there was no consultation with civil society on the new law on migration which did not decouple national security from migration and did not establish guarantees to due process or access to justice or the protection of human rights defenders. There was also no guarantee to transparency and access to information and it did not incorporate a gender perspective or take into account the special needs of women and children. Ms. Vertie said this law did not meet international human rights law standards. This law might be a step in the right direction, but it could not work alone so more needed to be done and there needed to be a change in attitudes and mentalities as well as a change in the justice system.

CYNTHIA SALIM, of the International Catholic Migration Commission, said that the shift in language had to be carefully made to determine who was a migrant, who was just passing through and who was a criminal. Regarding Mexican nationals abroad, it was important to talk to migrants about the steps they took to get out of the country and regularization would be the best form of protection for those nationals living abroad.

JOSE ALEXANDRO SOLALINDE GUERRA, of the Pastoral Dimension of Human Mobility of the Catholic Church, said he agreed with the National Human Rights Commission that crimes against migrants were often underreported and due to a lack of coordination and fragmentation of state and federal authorities the official data was incomplete. Authorities often used excessive force in stopping and detaining migrants and human rights defenders were experiencing increasingly violent attacks.

FLOR MARIA RIGONI, of the Scalabrini International Migration Network, said that decriminalizing migration meant moving from a criminal action to an administrative one, and this did not mean that migrants could not be detained, only that they could not be prosecuted for committing a criminal offence.


For use of the information media; not an official record

CMW11/002E