Rights

There are various categories of rights that are now enshrined, to varying degrees, in laws, international conventions and agreements. Rights of relevance to migrants, both forced and voluntary, include civil and political rights, access to justice and redress to courts, the right of association and assembly, the right to work, education and health, freedom from arbitrary detention, and the right to return. However, despite increasing acceptance of the notion that migrants either do have, or should have, rights, access to rights remains highly varied. Most obviously, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1990 is still only ratified by 33 states worldwide, almost all of them primarily sending countries of migrant workers (although these states include three of the four countries in which the Migration DRC works – Bangladesh, Egypt and Ghana).

So far, our work on rights has concentrated on the rights of forced migrants, and especially the way in which policy works to promote or restrict access to rights. For forced migrants, the range of relevant human rights instruments is larger, most noticeably including rights conferred under the Geneva Convention on Refugees. However, despite this ‘special’ protection for some forced migrants, and the growth of ‘rights-based’ approaches to a range of displaced people, refugees and other forced migrants often remain unable to access rights. In Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, India, Malaysia and Ghana, we are examining why access to rights is limited, and the extent to which forced migrants seek to mobilise around rights, highlighting two key rights in each country case study.

We are also developing new work which focuses on access to rights and human rights violations amongst migrant domestic workers in Cairo, replicating an existing study by the principal investigator in Beirut, which is currently nearing completion.