September 13, 2006
The United Nations General Assembly will meet September 14-15 for the High-Level Dialogue on Migration and Development. Concurrently, the Global Community Dialogue on Migration, Development, & Human Rights is occurring all week organized by NGOs. Civil society participation in the High-Level Dialogue is limited to eight representatives from around the world and observation status is restricted to NGOs with ECOSOC status (UN Economic and Social Council). As a consequence, most NGOs will be excluded. As an alternative, and to ensure that UN representatives know that civil society is following the events closely, the side event was organized by Migrant Rights International, National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights and Migrant Forum Asia.
So far the Community Dialogue has been excellent. Representatives from migrant organizations and migrant rights NGOs from around the world came to New York to participate. Every continent was represented. Global Workers presented at a panel entitled, “The Global Economy and Strategies for Advancing the Rights of Undocumented Migrant Workers.” Global Workers underscored the challenges migrants face when vindicating their rights after they have returned to their country of origin—regardless of immigration status in the country of employment. The Community Dialogue covers a wide range of topics, including impact of global economic systems, forced migration, trafficking, domestic workers and much more. In addition to the substance of the panels, the informal exchanges and strategy building for how to insert the migrant voice into the UN dialogue was quite fruitful. There is no doubt that the NGOs are increasingly organized around migrant issues globally. This is an important development. Without the voce of the migrants and their advocates, the governmental policies will continue to be solely from the economic perspective and not from a rights-based approach.