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OSCE-IOM-ILO launch Handbook on Labour Migration for the Mediterranean

ILO together with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are launching a major new tool here today to assist governments and social partners around the Mediterranean to regulate labour migration.

News | 12 December 2007

RABAT (ILO news) – ILO together with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are launching a major new tool here today to assist governments and social partners around the Mediterranean to regulate labour migration.

The OSCE-ILO-IOM Handbook on Effective Labour Migration Policies, Mediterranean Edition (Note 1), will be presented at a meeting in Rabat, Morocco, on 12-13 December.

The meeting will be the first ever tripartite conference for the entire Mediterranean region on the now immensely important issue of labour migration. High-level government, employer and trade union delegates from nearly twenty countries around the entire Mediterranean region and elsewhere have confirmed participation.

Objectives of the meeting are to reinforce cooperation among countries around the region, enhance recognition of the mutual benefits of regulated labour migration, support implementation of effective policies and practices, and promote equitable treatment and integration migrant workers and their families.

The meeting will address the gamut of labour migration issues, including migration and development linkages, labour supply and demand considerations, protection of migrants, and social cohesion. Environmentally induced migration will also be discussed.

The Handbook being launched at the event contains policy models, practical guidelines and good practice examples from the Mediterranean region as well as elsewhere. It features the international legal framework on migration and presents policy models and practices to optimize benefits of organized labour migration for both origin and destination countries, to protect rights of migrant workers, and to reduce irregular migration.

The Handbook also refers to the ILO Plan of Action for Migrant Workers, including the ILO Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration adopted in 2005 which provides for an integrated and rights based approach to labour migration. Senior officials of Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Interior, and/or Labour, and of representative national trade union and employer federations will attend from Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, the occupied Palestinian territory, Tunisia and Turkey in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain from the Northern Mediterranean, as well as Finland, Germany and the United States will be represented.

The Handbook will be issued initially in Arabic and English.


Note 1 - For more information on the Handbook on Establishing Effective Labour Migration Policies, Mediterranean Edition, OSCE, IOM and ILO, Vienna 2007, please contact Ibrahim Awad or Patrick Taran, ILO International Migration Programme, migrant@ilo.org .