COMMITTEE ON PROTECTION OF MIGRANT WORKERS ELECTS NEW CHAIRPERSON AND OTHER MEMBERS OF ITS BUREAU

The Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families this morning held a brief public meeting at which it elected a new Bureau from among its members. The Committee elected Abdelhamid El Jamri as Committee Chairperson; José Brillantes, Anamaría Dieguez and Azad Taghizadet as Vice-Chairpersons; and named Francisco Alba as Rapporteur.

Prasad Kariyawasam, outgoing Committee Chairperson, said he had had the honour of being the first Chair of the Committee, since it had been established in 2004. The first four years of the Committee had not been without problems: it had experienced some teething pains. But the Committee had come a long way, and was now back to its traditional work that it was expected to do: reviewing country reports, which were now being received in sufficient numbers. Now the Committee also had to concentrate on universalising the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Mr. El Jamri, the newly elected Chairperson, was very well qualified and had a long record of promoting the rights of migrant workers both in his own country (Morocco) and throughout the world. He came from a region that was very touched by the problems of migrant workers, so he would be a very good choice for the next stage of the Committee's existence.

Mr. El Jamri, Committee Chairperson, said he had been a member of the Committee since its founding in 2004. He had learned a lot from his experience on the Committee. His work had always related to Africa and Europe, and he had now extended that to Asia and Latin America. The problems faced today mainly involved the finding of solutions: they had theoretical mastery of the issues surrounding migration, but they had not yet developed tools for handling international migration flows. It was up to the United Nations and other international organizations to do that now.

Mr. El Jamri said that, in its first phase, the Committee had been involved in learning how a treaty body worked; drawing up guidelines; developing its own culture; and making the presence of the Committee felt within the community of human rights treaties bodies and within the international scene. Today everyone recognized the specificity of the Committee.

Today, they were entering into a second phase, Mr. El Jamri said. It would be a confirmation of their culture and the tools they had developed. The State party reports were now coming in and they would begin to work on follow-up to the reports. The approach taken by the Committee was to teach Member States, which had to better take into account migration flows in their legislation and administration. That teaching aspect of the Committee's work should be kept in mind today, but they now needed to be more rigorous in the indivisibility of the rights of migrant workers and stricter in their recommendations to States. They also had to emphasize the benefits of migratory flows to development. Moreover, they were seeing an increase in migratory flows owing to climate change and the rise in food costs. Given that situation, countries needed to consider what sort of policies on migration flows needed to be put forward at both the regional and international level. There was still no long-term action being taken to deal with this. The Committee needed to work with the current situation to see that such comprehensive long-term policies were put in place.

This afternoon, at 3 p.m., the Committee will take up its consideration of the initial report of Syria (CMW/C/SYR/1).


For use of the information media; not an official record

CMW08004E