Global Policy Debates

The ILO has played a key role in global policy debates on international migration . In 2004, the International Labour Conference, comprising all ILO's constituents (governments, employers' and workers' organizations), held a general discussion on migrant workers, which resulted in a Resolution and Conclusions on a fair deal for migrant workers in a global economy. The Conclusions contained an ILO Plan of Action for migrant workers that advocated a rights-based approach to labour migration which takes account of labour market needs. The centrepiece of this Plan of Action was the Development of a Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration, a set of non-binding principles and guidelines for a rights-based approach to labour migration, approved by the ILO's Governing Body for publication and dissemination in March 2006.

The ILO has also contributed to global processes established in the wake of the first High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Develpment held in 2006, in particular to the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the Global Migration Group, and is actively involved in preparations for the second High-Level Dialogue, which will take place at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 3-4 October 2013. As part of these preparations, the ILO submitted a Background Paper on International Migration and Development, which will feed into a set of draft outcomes and recommendations for the High-Level Dialogue currently being prepared by the United Nations Population Fund and the International Organization for Migration, in collaboration with the Global Migration Group.

The Global Forum on Migration and Development is an informal, non-binding, voluntary and government-led consultative process with the principal objective of addressing the migration and development linkages in practical and action-oriented ways. It operates primarily via roundtable discussions which bring together government representatives and where international organizations enjoy an observer status. The inputs from the ILO have aimed in particular at extending the recognition of the labour aspects of migration, the value of a rights-based approach to labour migration and the importance of social dialogue. They have focused, inter alia, on specific issues such as skills development, return and social and professonal reintegration, the role of diaspora communities for development, policy coherence, gender and labour migration, and migrant domestic workers, with a particular focus on Convention No. 189 and its supplementing Recommendation No. 201. The ILO has attempted to build a bridge between civil society and participating governments and has provided special support when participation of workers' and employers' organizations has been considered.

The ILO has given full support to common activities of the Global Migration Group. Contributions were made to symposia, expert meetings, common papers, briefs and statements on migration, education and employment; migration and human development; rooting migration policies in human rights; irregular migration; migration and climate change; and a Handbook on Mainstreaming Migration into Development Planning, to name but a few. ILO has also opened up its own activities to participation and contributions by other Group members, for example in inviting resource persons from Global Migration Group agencies to the ILO's Labour Migration Academy, organized since 2011 at ITCILO. And example of a functional coalition of Global Migration Group members is the UN-EC Joint Migration and Development Initiative, which includes the United Nations Development Programme (lead agency), ILO, the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations Population Fund and the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and aims to strengthen the migration and development capacity of civil society in developing countries and seeks diaspora involvement.

The ILO has decided to actively engage in the process, preparations and debates on what a post-2015 Development Agenda should look like to ensure that decent work is considered as an integral component of the post-2015 roadmap. International migration is being debated as one of the four megatrends within the global thematic consultation on "Population Dynamics", together with population growth, ageing and urbanization. The thematic consultation on "Population Dynamics", comprises the organization of different activities such as the commissioning of papers, online consultations, the holding of an Expert Group Meeting, a Private Sector consultation, a Civil Society consultation and a High-Level Leadership Meeting that will aim at discussing the synthesized results and findings of the online engagement, papers and consultations. A thematic think on "Labour Migration" is under preparation by the ILO as a contribution to the debate on international migration.