Financial Times

Lankan migrant workers hail new UN convention

ACTFORM (The Action Network for Migrant Workers), a Colombo-based group representing the interests of migrant workers, is planning a demonstration in Colombo on July 1 to hail the new UN Convention on the rights of all migrant workers and their families.

"We invite all interested parties along with migrant workers to join us on this occasion," said Viola Perera, ACTFORM convenor at a news conference last week.

The convention, which became effective after 21 UN-member countries signed and ratified it and comes into force on July 1, is seen as a major victory for rights movements, migrant workers and migrant worker associations worldwide. It would impact on the lives of close to one million Sri Lankan migrant workers and their families.

The convention has been signed by labour-sending countries including Sri Lanka and the Philippines while none of the labour-receiving countries has endorsed it so far. However, David Soysa, Director of the Migrant Services Centre (MSC), told reporters that the UN Convention puts a lot of pressure on countries like Sri Lanka to ensure the rights of migrant workers and their families.

"A whole lot of changes would have to be effected by the Sri Lankan government which is also a signatory to the convention," he said. Sunila Abeysekera, director of INFORM, a human rights group, said the convention will enable labour-sending countries to work together towards ensuring the rights of migrant workers in their workplaces.

The convention has a section on social rights which includes non-discrimination, right to movement, right to life, freedom from torture and inhuman treatment, freedom from slavery and forced labour, and right to opinion and expression, among other issues.

It provides for economic rights dealing with the right to equality in wages and conditions of work, right to transfer earnings and savings and the right to movement and residence in the state of employment. A section on health rights in the convention says workers are entitled to receive emergency medical care while on children's rights, a migrant worker's child has a right to a name, registration of birth and to nationality as well as access to education. Migrant workers and their families, the convention says, also have the right to vote. The MSC took up this issue last year with the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the latter agreed that Sri Lankan migrant workers should be allowed to vote overseas at special polling booths run by Sri Lankan missions. The HRC's recommendations were presented to the government but there hasn't been any progress since then on this issue.