UNITED NATIONS: A new United Nations convention, which came into force on Tuesday, is aimed at protecting over 175 million migrant workers worldwide who are mostly deprived of their basic legal and human rights.

But the impact of the convention, say human rights organizations, is limited by the fact that only 22 out of the 191 UN member states have ratified it.

“To date, not one industrialized country has ratified the convention, despite the important contributions migrant workers make to their economies,” said Rory Mungoven of Human Rights Watch.

“Some developed countries have been reticent about joining the convention for fear that it may afford too many rights and entitlements to undocumented migrants,” he said.

The treaty — titled the International Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families — was originally adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1990.

But it took nearly 13 years for the convention to receive the 20 ratifications it needed to become international law. As of today, 22 countries have ratified the convention and 17 have signed it.

The 22 countries ratifying the treaty include Egypt, Morocco, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Ghana, Bolivia, Uruguay, Senegal, Uganda and Guatemala — all countries whose migrant workers are employed either in the Middle East, Western Europe or North America.

Mungoven said the convention is by no means “soft” on illegal immigration. “All it asks is that undocumented migrants be treated in full compliance with the law, and not subjected to abuse.”

Robert Paiva of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), however, sees a slightly positive side to it.

“The entry into force of the convention is a first step which in the immediate term will make a concrete difference in the lives of a limited number of migrants in a few countries,” he said.

At least 60 per cent of the world’s migrants live or work in Europe or North America. The rest live in countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Japan, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

Paiva said that the fact that industrial nations have shied away from the treaty reflects, among other things, how charged the issue of immigration and immigrants can be, particularly in tough economic times.

“When nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies are on the rise in many parts of the world, it is all the more difficult to build the political will for ratification of a convention seen to favour ‘foreigners’,” he added.

Mungoven said that fears of terrorism and economic insecurity have also prompted a backlash against migrants and other foreigners in many countries. “Migrant workers are vulnerable at the best of times, but they now need protection more than ever.”

He warned that many governments, including Australia and Spain, equate efforts to curb illegal immigration with the international campaign against terrorism.

In the United States, he said, hundreds of non-citizens of mostly Arab and South Asian descent have been detained, often arbitrarily, by the immigration service as part of the government’s investigation into the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001.

Paiva said his organization believes that all countries have a shared interest in seeing migration better managed, and a key element in better management is ensuring the safety and dignity of migrants — whatever their legal status.

But most of the migrant workers, according to human rights groups, are being deprived of their basic legal and human rights by employers who either hold them in servitude or force them to work in sweat shops for paltry wages.

According to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), one person out of 35 is a migrant.

The number of people who are living and working in a country other than their own is estimated at about 175 million people, which represents about three per cent of the world’s population. The total value of migrant earnings flowing through official channels doubled between 1988 and 1999, rising from $49 billion to $105 billion.

The estimated figure for last year was $150 billion, which was much larger than the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of Finland ($121 billion), Egypt ($98 billion), Singapore ($92 billion) and Chile ($70 billion).

The amount flowing to developing countries (about $65 billion on average) now exceeds both official development assistance (about $50 billion) and private debt and equity flows to developing nations.

Some of the major beneficiaries of migrant remittances include India ($10 billion annually), Mexico ($10 billion), the Philippines ($6.4 billion), Morocco ($3.3 billion), Egypt ($2.9 billion) and Turkey ($2.8 billion), according to World Bank figures.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.