World leaders from 163 countries gathered in Manila last week for the 2^nd Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), where United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pointed out that the global financial crisis is taking its toll on 200 million migrants worldwide. The UN head said that governments should protect these laborers sending remittances home from all over the globe if they do not want the crisis to worsen, reported the Agence France-Presse. The flow of remittances has already begun slowing down even as first world nations have started to consider cutting back on migrant workers to address increasing domestic unemployment, said BBC.com. 

But while Ban said that migrants could bear the brunt of international financial woes, he also declared that “migration can and should be a tool to lift us out of this economic crisis”, noted inquirer.net.

Ban's statement—and the “government-centered” forum at which he said it—was met with widespread protests by those who declared that migration should not be seen simply in terms of the benefits it could bring to the economy. Others disagreed that migration is a tool for development, saying that “it is a reflection of a country's underdevelopment and is not a solution to poverty.”

Leaders of the alternative International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) cried out most strongly against the UN chief, declaring that migration “dehumanizes” them, reported abs-cbnnews.com.

“We refuse to be further exploited by developed countries, financial institutions, and our own bankrupt governments to save the sinking boat of neo-liberal globalization. In the first place, it is this crisis of unprecedented poverty and joblessness that forced us to leave our families and work like slaves abroad,” IAMR official Eni Lestari, an Indonesian domestic helper, was quoted as saying. “We will see no end to situations wherein migrants are vulnerable to human rights violations, as long as labor exportation is institutionalized as a tool for survival for poor peoples and a means by which governments and big businesses profit.”

Migrants rights activists all over the globe also held a “no remittance day” at the GFMD's inauguration last October 29. Overseas workers from 29 different nations refused to send remittances to their home countries as a sign that they were “finally standing up against modern-day slavery that is forced migration”, reported gmanews.tv. Advocates also held a parallel session entitled “People's Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights” and issued a 10-point challenge to the GFMD, emphasizing that governments should prioritize export laborers' human rights.

As early as July this year, migrant groups took an antagonistic stance towards the GFMD, saying that the convention does not historically honor the migrant workers themselves. “Instead of protecting the safety and security of migrants, the GFMD process is focusing more and more on the needs of governments, enhancing the role of the private sector like banks, corporations, recruitment agencies, money transfer companies and systematically excluding the migrants themselves and civil society,” Agnes Matienzo, a project assistant for Migrant Forum in Asia, was quoted as saying by inquirer.net.

The more pressing issues which the GFMD must confront, such as slave-like working conditions, contract-substitution, non-payment of wages and the flesh trade are largely left undiscussed, said bulatlat.com. But such issues are overlooked because governments like the Philippines' are too reliant on remittances to bolster the economy, thereby encouraging a labor export policy that is “anti-development” and “anti-women.” The Philippines is one of the world's largest exporters of labor, with about 8.7 million Overseas Filipino Workers, according to gmanews.tv.

Photo: “Working Class” by May 4th, taken from Flickr.com. Licensed under Creative Commons license number BY-NC-ND-2.0-DEED.EN.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."