Forty-ninth session

12 August 1997

The Subcommission in the morning addressed issue related to the plight of migrant workers, racism and xenophobia, with several of its expert members painting a bleak picture of the situation around the globe.

According to Volodymyr Boutekvich, Subcommission expert from Ukraine, the situation of migrant workers was worse than that of any other social group. While a multitude of international conventions addressed the rights of migrant workers, few were implemented and the situation was getting worse. He proposed the creation of a sessional working group on the situation of migrant workers to actively discuss their problems and issue recommendations to the Subcommission.

El-Hajje Guisse, expert from Senegal, said the home countries of migrant workers often put up barriers to their right to leave and return. Once in foreign countries, migrant workers had little job security and often suffered abysmal working conditions, police harassment and social exclusion.

Ahmad Khalifa, expert from Egypt, said racism was on the rise, despite the fact that the Subcommission had been discussing the issue for fifty years. One of the results of globalization was the rejection of migrant workers, he said, adding that it was unfortunate that people did no realize that it was cultural diversity that gave a society strength and opened the way to survival.

Meanwhile, Asbjorn Eide, expert from Norway, said the Subcommission needed to seek better coordination with other United Nations bodies and regional agencies and should reflect on the best ways in which it could serve the needs of the High Commissioner for Human Rights through its analyses and recommendations. There should also be contacts with the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, he said, which has presented the Subcommission with proposals for various studies on the subject of racism. The Subcommission should also be centrally involved in shaping the content and work programme of the upcoming world conference on racism, added the expert.

Other recommendations came this morning from Mohammed Sardar Ali Khan, expert from India, who said the solution for migrant workers depended, to a large extent, on the enactment of suitable legislation in the field of citizenship.

The Subcommission heard statements from the following NGOs: Association for World Education, African Commission of Health and Human Rights Promoters, International Peace Bureau, International Association of Jewish Lawyers, National Bar Association and World Federation of Democratic Youth. The United Nations International Training and Research Institute for the Advancement of Women and the International Labour organization also addressed the session, as did the observer Governments of Bangladesh, Mexico, Iran, Turkey and Cuba.

The Subcommission began discussion in the afternoon of the promotion of economic, social and cultural rights, with speakers calling for greater emphasis on bridging the gap -- as the panel's alternate expert from China put it -- between " a worldof affluence" and "a world of want".

The Chinese alternate, Zhong Shukong, also contended that consumption patterns in rich countries were wasteful and not "sustainable", and said steps must be taken to ensure that "the affluence of some was not derived from the prolonged poverty of the many".

The agenda item, entitled "realization of economic, social and cultural rights" includes several sub-topics, including "the international economic order and the promotion of human rights", "the realization of the right to development", "the question of transnational corporations", and "the realization of the right to education, including education in human rights".

Representatives of NGOs Union of Arab Jurists and International Educational Development used the occasion to call for an end to the international economic embargo against Iraq, saying it not only violated economic rights but fundamental rights to health and even to life.

Addressing the meeting were representatives of Society for Threatened Peoples; International Association of Democratic Lawyers; Liberation; Union of Arab Jurists; International Educational Development; American Association of Jurists; World Muslim Congress; International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies; Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization; International Institute for Peace; International Association Against Torture; and Pax Romana. Also speaking were the Subcommission alternate expert from China and the expert from Romania.