Comments
This measure shares contents with other measures, such as priority measure 73. Specifically, it refers to countries of transit and destination, without prejudice to establishing obligations for migrants’ countries of origin and return.
Possible lines of action
1. Create cross-sector institutions to monitor immigration regulations, policies and programmes. 2. Encourage countries that have not yet done so to ratify the International Convention on Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. 3. Adopt specific national legislation on the rights of migrants, and the regulations, standards and treatment protocols needed for its application. 4. Prepare specific policies and programmes that take into account the intersectoral nature of attention to migrants’ issues. 5. Conduct ongoing evaluations of regional, subregional, extraregional and bilateral agreements for the protection of migrants. 6. Establish mechanisms for consulting civil society and involving it in the institutional structure for migration. 7. Negotiate subregional and regional measures to facilitate regular migration. 8. Adopt concrete measures against the discrimination and xenophobia that affect migrants. 9. Promote consistency between internal rules, regional agreements and the international human rights instruments to which countries have signed up.
Related instruments, forums and mechanisms
This priority measure is related to nearly all the other measures in this chapter. It is covered by at least two specific international instruments: the obligations flowing from ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (17 countries in the region), and the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. All international and Inter-American human rights instruments (and the reports of their treaty bodies) complement these mechanisms, in addition to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Palermo protocols. The mandates of the United Nations agencies and IOM must also be considered. The action plans and commitments of the Regional Conference on Migration and the South American Conference on Migration also provide backing, in particular because they include that have not ratified the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. CELAC is one appropriate forum for follow-up. Other multilateral cooperation forums have also made insistent reference to this measure, directly or indirectly (Summit of the Americas, UNASUR, MERCOSUR, the Andean Community, SICA and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), among others). This priority measure also relates to target 10.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (“Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through implementation of plans and well-managed migration policies”).
