|
(March 16, 2007/ Bangkok,
Thailand) The Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats together
with the South East Asia Committee on Advocacy (SEACA) and the
Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) organized the CALD-SEACA-MFA
Conference on Migration with the theme “Labor Migration in South
East Asia: What Role for Parliamentarians?” last March 12-14,
2008 in Amari Boulevard Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. This event
was hosted by the Democrat Party Thailand (DP) and supported by
the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and SEARCH Canada.
A multi-sectoral audience was in
attendance and in-depth discussions took place among members of
the civil society and academe, representatives of trade unions
and of United Nation agencies such as International Labor
Organization and International Organization on Migration, and
members of parliament from CALD member parties.
This convergence sought to
understand the context of labor migration in South East Asia by
providing and exchanging relevant information and recent
developments on the issue; to address the various policy
challenges on migration by creating and facilitating linkages
among various stakeholders (i.e. members of Parliament in South
East Asia, international and regional organizations,
governments, civil society groups, and trade unions); to
identify common priority advocacies and action plans by
presenting and evaluating initiatives and experiences on migrant
workers’ concerns; and to forge concrete proposals by presenting
targets, time frames, and action-based programs and initiatives
that will address the urgent concerns on labor migration in
South East Asia.
The two-day conference formally
opened with a keynote address delivered by Ambassador Kasit
Piromya, former Thai Ambassador to United States of America,
Russian Federation, People’s Republic of Mongolia, Republic of
Papua New Guinea, Federation Republic of Germany, and Japan.
Ambassador Piromya is currently the Director of International
Affairs of the DP Thailand and advisor to the party leader, Hon.
Abhisit Vejjajiva, MP. He said in his message that
parliamentarians in the region can play a very important role in
pushing their respective countries to join UN-related and
international conventions and enhance bilateral, regional and
inter-regional operations in addressing migration issues.
According to him this conference is timely and important as it
will raise more awareness, better understanding and hopefully
better networking for cooperation. He also mentioned that DP
Thailand deemed the issue of migration as one of the urgent
tasks of Thailand and ASEAN and committed to put this as the
major policy issue of the party to mitigate the plight and to
systematize in a humane manner the livelihood of migrant
workers.
The conference had five sessions
discussing the overview of labour migration in Southeast Asia,
the sending and receiving country policies on migration, the
role of parliamentarians and the best practices in bilateral
agreements as well as the regional responses on migration. The
last session was devoted to the output of the working groups
where concrete initiatives were further explored.
Among the recommendations of the
plenary are: 1) ensuring the parliamentarian’s proper
consultation with civil society organizations, trade unions and
migrants groups; 2) initiating the dialogue among sending
country governments for policy coherence; 3) seeking the
parliamentary assistance in following-up the activation of the
committee for the ASEAN Declaration on migrant workers.
This was the second conference
of CALD on the topic of migration. The ALDE-CALD-LI Meeting in
June 2006 in Manila, Philippines brought together Asian and
European liberals to tackle on the issues of population,
immigration and the globalization of labor.
Please click
here for more information. |
