Members of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), Gabriela, Anakbayan, Migrante, Tanggol Migrante Movement (TMM), Malaya Movement, and ICHRP protested outside the United Nations building in New York City on September 25 to condemn the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for excluding migrant sector representatives in its forum under the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
The IOM forum took place on September 22 and was attended by the Philippines, Somalia, Belgium, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland.
Established in 1951, IOM is an intergovernmental organization inside the UN that claims to promote the rights and welfare of migrants. UN member states and organizations gather under IOM every four years to discuss the goals of the Global Compact on Migration (GCM). The GCM, signed in 2018, is a neoliberal framework on migration that manages the overall system of forced migration for labor exploitation.
Philippine officials who attended the activity included Department of Foreign Affairs secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro and Department of Migrant Workers secretary Hans Cacdac.
“Who are these people inside these meetings? Is it the migrants themselves? No. The government officials have no clue what the migrants are facing,” Migrante USA’s Dominik de Jesus said.
“Migrant workers face countless hardships, including lack of medical attention, cases of kidnapping, and deportation of ship workers without due process. Despite this, migrants are still being pushed to go abroad for lack of opportunities in the Philippines,” de Jesus added.
According to the International Migrants Alliance (IMA), the IOM forum does not represent migrants. Discussing the issues of migrants without migrants present is absurd.
The GCM also aims to make migration “safe, orderly and regular,” which creates mechanisms that further push migrants to leave their country.
Concurrently, Bayan-USA, Bayan Northeast, and TMM protested outside the Philippine Consulate in New York to denounce ongoing corruption in the Philippines and to expose the consulate’s refusal to address Filipino migrants.
The organizations also called on Lazaro and Cacdac to engage in a dialogue with the Filipino migrant community in the US. Similar to Philippine consulates across the US, they continue to ignore the grievances of Filipino migrants.
