GCM Orientation Discussion with Beranda Migran

Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) together with Beranda Migran have successfully conduct online discussion on Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) Orientation and its relevance to migrants last July 16, 2024. The orientation was conducted with Bahasa Indonesia and able to discuss the situations of migrants’ community and certain related GCM objectives. The online GCM Orientation involved more than 45 participants coming from various communities and organizations of migrants and advocates. 

During the dicussion, the participants questioning the implementation of GCM in Indonesia. As champion country of GCM, it is surprising that not so many people, including the community of migrants and advocate, know and understand the GCM more over the implementation of GCM by Indonesian government. While the guiding principles of GCM mention about the whole-government and whole-society approach for GCM implementation.

Most of the participants highlight the situations of vulnerabilities of migrants and the lack of protection provided by the government of origin. Even from one village, based on findings of one of the participants, there are a lot of cases involving migrant workers and even the government of the village do not have knowledge and data on it. It can be related to some objectives of GCM, including objective 1 on collect and utilize accurate and disaggregated data as a basis for evidence-based policies, objective 7 on addressing and reducing vulnerabilities in migration, objective 14 on enhancing consular protection, assistance and cooperation throughout the migration cycle and objective 17 on access to justice.

Other participant who only knew GCM from the orientation ask for more similar orientation to inform them about frameworks that can be use in doing advocacy and campaigns.

APMM and its partners will continue the GCM orientation at the national level. APMM advocates for meaningful participation of migrants in the GCM process and other advocacy spaces. APMM view grassroots migrants as the primary stakeholders and experts in the migration discourse as they are the first to experience the challenges of labor migration and the impacts of agreements and policies and has actively communicate their demands.

Let us make the Global Compact work for migrants and with migrants.