ITEM 14: Specific groups and individuals (Migrant workers)

Mr Chairman,

Recent studies carried out by the United Nations reveal that in the next decades the decline in the population of many industrialised countries will result in the need to resort to a labour force from other countries that cannot offer work to their nationals within their borders. It is estimated that the working population in Italy will decrease from 39 to 22 million and from 56 to 43 million in Germany. Therefore, there is a mutual need for co-operation between both receiving and sending countries. This co-operation has to be regulated not only according to world economic standards, but also, most importantly, according to basic human rights and principles.

However, it seems that there is a general lack of real will at the international level. Thus, it is a matter of great concern that only a few countries (twelve) have ratified the UN Convention on the Protection of Human Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of their Families as well as other international instruments such as the ILO Conventions that deal with this issue.

This grave lack of international commitment, together with other obstacles to an effective and full protection of the human rights of migrant workers, favour xenophobia and racism in the receiving countries against migrants who go there in search of a better standard of living, and offering their labouring capacities.

Pax Romana wants to express its concern with regard to the well known episode that occurred in El Ejido, in the south of Spain, in February 2000. The racial origin of the person who committed the crime (an Arab) provoked a violent reaction from the population, not against the crime, execrable in itself, but against the Maghribian community. This reaction, with a clear socio-economic background, was caused by ignorance and misinformation, by the existing latent racism and also by a new regulation on migrants recently passed in Spain, which ameliorates their situation. This law in granting new rights to foreigners, makes those who had benefited under the old system increase their expenses and renounce to a maximum benefit at a minimum cost, thus losing in part their 'immoral' authority they had imposed on migrants in a weak legal situation.

A Deputy of the Spanish Parliament who visited the area a few days after the event, verified not only the terrible conditions under which migrant workers were living.. He felt "as if I was back in the age of the Industrial Revolution, in a closed society, divided into classes". There is no need to be reminded that at that time, human rights were not taken into account and exploitation of human beings by others was part of the game. But this was during the Industrial Revolution, not the present.

The Spanish law now in force is a good one. It is one of the most progressive in the European Union in some issues. It is good not only because it focuses on the need to integrate migrants into Spanish society but also because it treats migrants as persons, not as undocumented irregulars or aliens granting basic rights to them regardless of their legal situation.

Some of the law's most positive aspects are: a broad right to health and legal assistance and to education. Also of note are: the permanent process of regularisation, family reunification and the regulation of the special status of seasonal workers. This was set in order to avoid marginalisation and labour exploitation and to assure institutional control of proper housing conditions and social assistance following the Spanish-Morrocan Administrative Agreement of 30 September 1999.

However, this law has a problem: its life is at stake. The political party that won the last general elections by an absolute majority announced that one of the first things they would do was to change this law. This argument was used to gain votes, which is intolerable. By doing so, politicians gave Spanish voters the wrong image of migrants, as if they did not deserve to have so many rights or to be treated as equal human beings.

In the light of the amendments to the law issued in due time by the Partido Popular, if the law were to be modified, important aspects such as family reunification for humanitarian reasons, the administration's duty to assure minimum living standards for seasonal workers or some of the workers' rights to fully participate in public and local life could be abolished.

If this happened, or if all legislative measures necessary for its real implementation were not passed or were not adequate, it would be a significant step backwards. A great opportunity to lay a progressive foundation before European partners who could take the law as a model to bring into line the needs of receiving countries and states of origin would be missed.

For all these reasons, Pax Romana kindly asks this Commission:

• to encourage Spain and other migrant workers' receiving countries, in particular the European Union, to follow a migration policy based upon human rights and, in particular, to pass all necessary legislative measures so as to implement the current Spanish law that, under no circumstances, should be modified to lower the level of rights, as recommended by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,
• to urge countries that have not yet done so, to ratify the 1990 UN Convention as well as the ILO Conventions 97 and 143, as recommended in its resolution 1999/45, in the Working Group's report and in the one presented by the Special Rapporteur in doc. E/CN.4/2000/82,
• to endeavour to establish close links between the protection of migrants' rights and the work of the Preparatory Committee on the World Conference Against Racism in 2001.