SIMN

7th Series of Conferences at the United Nations of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Migrants

The 7th Series of Conferences of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant workers and their families was held from November 26th to the 30th at the United Nations’ office in Geneva (The Palais Wilson). During these conferences, the Committee considered the reports of the governments of Ecuador, Syria and Bolivia and outlined strategies and activities that will foster the ratification and the application of the International Convention for the Protection of Migrant Workers and their families.  

SIMN took part in these conferences and presented a document with some observations to the Bolivian government’s report. In this document SIMN, together with the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) and the Scalabrini Foundation of Bolivia, outlined some normative and administrative elements that were not considered by the Bolivian government and presented some concrete proposals on the responsibility of the Bolivian government in the field of the protection of the immigrant and emigrant workers and their families.

Among the normative elements, we should underline the legal definition of the fundamental rights, among which there is the right to work. Even if the rights are specified by the law, the Bolivian government cannot guarantee these rights because of a number of structural problems and difficult circumstances that are neither transitory nor simply conjectural.  Among these we see the crisis of the economy, unemployment, endemic poverty, corruption and the movement of people toward the cities and abroad. Still in the normative field, we see the necessity of an emigration law to provide the Bolivian emigrants with an effective protection especially with a better presence of the consulates and the widening of consular services.     

In administration, the SIMN, CMS and Scalabrini Foundation’s document insists on the necessity of a better coordination among the various migration authorities, the simplification of the procedures and the reduction of the costs of the documents necessary for the legalization of the immigrants in Bolivia and the Bolivian emigrants.