Migration and development
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The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, provides for a strong link between decent work and migration in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 on promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all, which contains target 8:8:
“Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment.”
Other important targets relating to labour migration are found in SDG 10 on reducing inequality within and among countries: “facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies” (target 10.7) and “by 2030, reduce to less than 3 per cent the transaction costs of migrant remittances and eliminate remittance corridors with costs higher than 5 per cent” (target 10.c).
As observed by Sandra Polaski, ILO Deputy Director-General:
“Achieving these targets will require stepped up actions within both origin and destination countries and cross-border collaboration at both bilateral and multilateral levels.
These include more effective labour laws and regulation of migrant labour practices in destination countries and institutions to enforce them, including in relevant languages and with protection against retaliation and deportation. Special attention must be given to those workers most at risk, such as migrant domestic workers; [and]
Establishing fair recruitment mechanisms including effective monitoring and oversight at national level, through bilateral or plurilateral agreements among countries in migration corridors and at multilateral level.
These agreements could include, for example, provisions requiring that the employer and not the migrant worker pays for recruitment frees. ILO’s international standards on this issue require that recruitment fees or costs should not be charged to migrant workers, directly or indirectly.”
Remarks at the EU Presidency of Luxembourg and World Bank Conference on Migration and the Global Development Agenda, World Bank, Washington, D.C., 9 December 2015.
The ILO is providing strategic input to the work of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) of the UN Statistical Commission, composed of UN member States and including regional and international agencies as observers, which is developing a global indicator framework to measure the SDG targets. In early 2015, the ILO also prepared a paper on Promoting decent work for migrant workers, in which some possible tentative indicators are discussed.
Recognition of human mobility as a key factor for sustainable development is also underscored in the Declaration of the High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development adopted by the UN General Assembly at the Second High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development, held in New York in October 2013. Much of the ILO’s position on the links between international migration and development, including protecting the rights of all migrants, the important role of international labour standards, and cooperation regarding labour mobility, were also captured in this Declaration.
The ILO’s unique mandate for the protection of migrant workers and related areas of work are very relevant to the current debates on and initiatives in migration and development, which are also taking place in the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and the Global Migration Group (GMG), comprising 18 agencies, which the ILO chaired in 2014.