DOUALA - By 2015, the number of migrant workers in the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) could reach a massive 3 million. On 7 March, an ILO meeting in Doula, Cameroon, adopted a plan of action which emphasizes the need to provide better protection for migrant workers in the region, and clears the path for better management of this ever-increasing labour force.
Representatives of governments, employers and workers in the six CEMAC countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad) agreed to the action plan, which provides for the harmonization of migrant workers' legal status, the creation of a fact-finding centre on migration within the CEMAC, the coordination of migration policies within the sub-region, and the launching of a campaign for the ratification of international Conventions on the protection of migrant workers.
The meeting decided that the evaluation and prediction of migratory movements would play a critical role in its effective management. To that end, a subregional tripartite fact-finding centre is to be set up within the CEMAC countries. It is to collect, process, and analyze information on migration, and it will work in close cooperation with existing national networks to exchange and diffuse knowledge throughout the subregion. Delegates noted that the harmonization of national legislations, an essential element in addressing migration issues, is cruelly lacking in the subregion.
Highlighting the disparities between the different countries' current laws on foreign workers, they proposed a review of the legislative texts in the light of two international Conventions adopted by the ILO in 1949 and 1975.
These deal with the protection of workers employed in a country other than their country of birth, and are intended to provide protection against possible exploitation. A campaign for the promotion of these Conventions is about to be launched, and it is hoped that other CEMAC countries will follow Cameroon in ratifying both instruments
Moreover, the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, a development of the two ILO Conventions, is set to enter into force on 1 July this year.
The devastating effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the subregion were also on the agenda in Douala. Discrimination based upon nationality continues to block access to screening, treatment, and health care for migrant workers, and it was agreed that legislation and agreements between social partners should be negotiated for the benefit of this particularly vulnerable group. There was better news for children too, when further legal and judicial reinforcements were proposed to combat and repress renewed child trafficking in and beyond the frontiers of the subregion.
The Douala seminar, together with other regional events which took place in 2002, or are planned for later this year, are a precursor to the general discussion on migrant workers to be held at the International Labour Conference in June, 2004.