MADRID, Sept 14: A global forum on migration wrapped up on Sunday in Spain with a march through the streets of Madrid by some 5,000 people to demand more rights for immigrants around the world, organisers said.

“This demonstration is a call for the elimination of barriers against migrants’ rights,” a spokeswoman for the Third World Social Forum on Migrations, Eugenia Garcia Raya, said.The demonstrators broke through a canvas wall established to represent the barriers to immigrants. A declaration was read out at the end of the march which called for a “world without walls.”

The declaration called on the European Union to repeal a decision it took in June to allow illegal immigrants to be detained for up to 18 months and face a five-year re-entry ban.

The detention limit is longer than the current maximum period in 18 of the 27 members of the bloc. Rights groups argue it will encourage authorities to lock up more illegal immigrants.

The declaration also called on European nations to ratify a 1990 United Nations convention on the rights of migrants, which former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has called “the bill of rights for migrant workers and their families.”—AFP