Migrants at the center of GCM: Migrants and refugees successfully hold indicators workshop on GCM
Group Photo of Participants, Regional Workshop on Developing Migrant and Refugee Indicators in the GCM
Make the GCM for, with and by migrants and refugees.
This was the very message that participants carried in the successfully held Regional Workshop on Developing Migrant and Refugee Indicators in the GCM in Bangkok, Thailand on November 26-27, 2024.
More than 60 participants joined the workshop - with 40 participating attending in person and 20 attending virtually, representing migrant, refugee and advocate organizations and network, from 18 various countries and region in the Asia Pacific and Middle East, including Australia, Bangladesh, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Middle East, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Tajikistan, Thailand and Uzbekistan. Highly commendable were the online participants especially those from Central Asia as well as from Cambodia and Thailand who actively participated in the two-day workshop.
The workshop was organized by Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) together with Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN), Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility in Asia (CARAM Asia) and International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW AP).
Highlighting migrant concerns and making GCM stick
The sessions in the workshop were arranged in such a way as to provide space for participants to discuss their issues, see the objectives of GCM and the progress of GCM implementation from their perspective and design GCM indicators collectively and plan for the next steps.
After the opening and introduction, Rey Asis of APMM discussed the GCM and its relevance to migrants and refugees’ campaigns, advocacies and initiatives, and provided a recap of its past, recent and next activities. Asis emphasized that migrants and refugees’ engagement in the GCM process should be based on the empowerment of migrants and refugees and serve their continuing struggle. During the open forum, Mandeep Bela of Union Network of Migrants (UNEMIG) New Zealand stated that GCM should be utilized as a tool to forward migrant voices, but otherwise, migrants and organizations have the role to do the on the groundwork and ensure that migrants voice are heard, no matter what.
During the sharing of migrant and refugee issues, Ian Bojo of Kaugnay Singapore shared his stories as a migrant domestic worker. He said that he was forced to work abroad because he had to help his family's economy while job opportunities with decent wages in the country were very limited, and abroad there were opportunities with better wages. However, working abroad was also not easy because he also had to face high agency fees, could not change jobs, was controlled by his employer and his rights were reduced. Facing this situation, he decided to get involved with organizations and carry out campaigns and initiatives including the 24-hour rest day campaign.
Zaki Haidari of APPRN's Australia, NZ and Pacific working group also shared his experience as a refugee. From a young age, Haidari had to become a refugee to avoid persecution in his home country, stranded in several countries until finally getting a permanent protection visa in Australia. Haidari said that refugees experience problems with smuggling, abuse by authorities and some residents, and days without food and drink. “Refugees are often detained, only get temporary visas, are not allowed to work and speak in public and are not allowed to meet their families,” he added. Haidari continued by saying that the campaign and advocacy until he and several other refugees get permanent visas in Australia today is the result of a long struggle since 2013, and there is still much to be done. The campaign and advocacy that he is currently continuing to voice is for countries to increase the number of refugee admissions and provide humanitarian assistance for displaced people.
During the open forum, participants shared issues about the lack of rights to organize and free speech, where some migrants got deported because of speaking up; multiple burdens experience by women migrant and refugee, their situation increased their vulnerability to gender based violence and child marriages; women migrant experience hardship in reintegration upon their return; a long bureaucratic process to gain recognition for refugee, the non-recognition of refugee make it harder to do campaign and left behind with no access to work, healthcare and education; various visa limitation for migrant workers, and so on.
Dewi Amelia of APMM highlighted the victory of the collective struggle of migrants, advocates and other civil society organizations for the case of Mary Jane Veloso, who will likely be repatriated back to the Philippines based on an agreement signed between the Philippine and Indonesian governments. “Mary Jane will return home after 14 years of struggling in Indonesian prison,” she said, “but she will still be in jail. We should continue to campaign to the Philippine government to grant her immediate clemency so she can finally be reunited with her family.”
In the following session called “A Luggage of Issues”, participants were divided into groups to identify and cluster their issues. During the report back, some clusters identified by participants are related to 1) lack of protection and meaningful government response to the problems of migrants and refugees, 2) gender and migration, 3) abuse from recruitment agencies, 4) non-recognition of asylum-seekers/refugees in policies and formal mechanisms, 5) labour rights violation, 6) citizenship issues and 7) Racism and xenophobia, other forms of discrimination.
At the next session, Aliza Yuliana of APWLD discussed the GCM Objectives. The session started with a creative discussion. During this discussion, participants felt that the GCM is not doing its job to protect the rights and welfare of migrants while some thought that while GCM is an important space, there is still a lot more to be done to make it work for all migrants. When discussing the GCM Objectives, Aliza emphasized that it is important to understand the impact of these goals at the local and national levels.
The session followed with a group exercise called “Making the GCM Stick”where breakout group participants linked the GCM objectives to the previously identified Issues in their “luggage of issues” by placing the stickers of GCM Objectives to the issues that they think the objectives relate to. During the report back, participants mentioned that there was no objective that relates to criminalization of migrants’ activists; the objectives not specifically mentioned about LGBT+ people and undocumented migrants; and meaningful participation is not highlighted much. There was also a question raised on why internal migration is not considered and not regulated.
Day 1 of the workshop closed with a session on Tracking the GCM Progress through Indicators facilitated by Klaus Dik Nielsen of APRRN and Julia Puno of APRN. In this session, Kate Sheill, a human rights consultant, presented about xenophobia in the Asia Pacific region, followed by Carolina Gottardo of International Detention Coalition who participated virtually and shared about the process of developing the indicators and their continuing advocacy in the GCM.
The participants then discussed what kind of indicators that migrant and refugee want. Some points from the discussion were: 1) Indicators should reflect grassroots participation and that migrants and refugees should be the primary stakeholders; 2) Language used in the GCM and its processes should be friendly to migrants and translated to the languages of migrants and refugees; 3) Indicators depend on the context of sending and receiving countries; 4) Indicators should be intersectional; and 5) Indicators should have sanctions for member states.
Developing migrant and refugee indicators
The following day started with a workshop session on developing the migrant and refugee indicators to the GCM, which ran for the whole morning. The report was to be held in the afternoon.
Following the workshop was a session on expanding conversation on other instruments and advocacies, facilitated by Nurul Khalida of CARAM Asia and Julia Puno of APRN. In this session, the co-organisers of the workshop shared the different advocacy spaces and instruments that they have been using or been participating in as they go about their advocacy work.
Among other, CARAM Asia shared about the ASEAN Forum on Migrant Labour (AFML); APRRN shared about the Global Compact for Refugees; APWLD shared about international engagements and national level engagements, including Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development; IWRAW AP shared about Convention on Elimination of all form of Discrimination Against Women and Beijing Platform of Action; and APRN shared about the APFSD and the need to strengthen the movements and campaigns in the national level.
The next session was Celebration of Solidarity, Resilience and Resistance, facilitated by Shanti Uprety of IWRAW AP. In this session, participants shared their success stories, good practices and lessons in a creative way. The session began with a presentation of photos from participants displaying their advocacy, campaigns and initiatives. Then participants were divided into groups to discuss how they can creatively present their celebration of solidarity, resilience and resistance. Amazingly creative presentations happened, group presentations with drawing and body movement, with song and dance, with a trash-ion show (using recycled materials in making clothes) and poetry.
After both sessions, the groups reported back on the indicators they developed earlier in the morning. In summary, the migrant and refugee indicators were clustered into 1) access to justice, 2) access to social protection, 3) women migrants, 4) decent work, 5) trafficking and 6) drivers of migration. During this session, the plan for the presentation of the indicators to the members of the UN Network on Migration the following day was also discussed.
The last session of the workshop was Next Steps, where participants agreed on conducting projects and activities around the migrant and refugee indicators and building advocacy for them as well as future collaborations beyond the GCM engagement.
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is an international instrument developed by the United Nations to guide governments in addressing challenges in international migration. Since its adoption in 2018, it has gone through the first Regional Review between 2020 and 2021 and the first International Migration Review Forum in 2022. On February 4-6, 2025, the GCM will hold its 2nd Regional Review in Asia and the Pacific.
During the closing, co-organizers say thank you to all participants for their active engagement and participation. And the workshop concluded with a photo session.
