Key Messages Migration isn’t driven by a lack of water and sanitation services, but providing services can support successful migration. The barriers faced by migrants make achieving the SDGs’ ambitions of universal access more challenging. Challenges stem from failures in governance, not the amount of water available, numbers of...

Key messages Migration can contribute to improving access to reliable, affordable modern energy services (SDG target 7.1) through higher incomes for migrants and the sending of remittances. The informal or irregular status of many migrants is a barrier to universal access to modern energy services. Migrants in informal settlements...

Background The process of becoming a humanitarian migrant is potentially damaging to mental health. We examined the association between pre-migration and post-migration potentially traumatic events and stressors and mental health, and assessed the moderating eff ect of post-migration stressors in humanitarian migrants in Australia. Methods In this study, we...

The principle of social protection may be to meet universal needs. However, social protection is defined, organized and provided in specific contexts. The right to social protection is defined by social norms, economic choices and political contestation. This generates contradictions between universal human rights and particularist rights to social...

This briefing considers the extent to which international labour migrants are covered by social protection, and the implications this has for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda). More specifically, this brief shows that social protection coverage of international labour migrants varies considerably, and outlines how this has...

This working paper: (i) examines migrants access to social protection under Bilateral Labour Agreements (BLAs) with a view to providing policy makers with guidelines for extending social protection to migrants and designing better migration policies; (ii) presents the results of a mapping of bilateral and multilateral social security agreements...

Nature of the Case Upon consideration of a communication submitted before it, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination held the Republic of Korea accountable for multiple violations of rights under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, including the right to...

This paper examines prospects for enhanced regional migration governance and protection of migrants’ rights in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Migration in this region is substantial in scale and diverse in nature, incorporating economic, political and mixed migration flows. In addition to movements between countries within the region,...

Since the 1970s in particular, the countries of Western Asia and those of the Asia-Pacific region have been closely linked to each other through highly extensive movements of people. Opportunities created by the rapid development of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), but also other countries in...

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Various processes have swept over Southeast Asia in the last four decades, producing pressures not only in the economic but also in the political and social milieus. When these processes congealed, transnational social movements (TSMs), which earlier had not paid much attention to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations...

In previous observations on the application of the Equality of Treatment (Accident Compensation) Convention, No 19, the Committee of Experts had expressed deep concerns over the situation of more than 2 million migrants working in Thailand. In response to these concerns, the Thai Government argued that the Workmen’s Compensation...

As a human right that is intrinsic to all, the international community recognizes the need to design and implement social protection systems according to the principle of social inclusion, underlying the particular need to include persons in the informal economy (Recommendation No. 202, para 3e). Delivery systems should therefore...

This handbook provides examples of successful interventions and highlights the benefits to social security systems and society as a whole of meeting the challenge of covering internal and international migrants. Link to this...

Article 27:   1. With respect to social security, migrant workers and members of their families shall enjoy in the State of employment the same treatment granted to nationals in so far as they fulfil the requirements provided for by the applicable legislation of that State and the applicable...

Recommendation No. 167 proposes model provisions for the conclusion of bilateral or multilateral social security agreements regarding all contingencies and provides rules on maintaining social security rights and exporting benefits. It also proposes a model agreement for the coordination of bilateral or multilateral social security instruments. Link to...

Convention No. 157 and its accompanying Recommendation No. 167 specifically address the issue of the maintenance of social security rights of migrant workers and complement Convention No. 118, focusing on equality of treatment and exportability. Unlike Convention No. 118 however, which allows State Parties to choose one or more...

Convention No. 118 addresses the issue of the social security of migrant workers in a global manner. It covers the nine branches of social security and provides that, for each branch accepted under the Convention, a ratifying State undertake to grant equality of treatment to nationals of other ratifying...

Today an estimated 245 million people live outside their country of origin. While responding to increased work demands for globalized labour markets, international migration poses significant challenges for migrants and their families in terms of social security coverage.  Compared to nationals working their entire lives in one country, migrants...

Summary: The case involved three brothers, originally from what was previously Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), who were denied access to social welfare benefits in Switzerland on account of being illegal residents . The brothers had been living in Switzerland since 1980, but were expelled to Czechoslovakia in 1987...

Summary: The case was brought before the Constitutional Court of South Africa by Mozambican citizens living in South Africa as permanent residents. The applicants challenged the validity of certain provisions of the Social Assistance Act 59 of 1992 that denied social assistance to foreign nationals. They cited the infringement...

The right to social security is enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as well as other international treaties, and has been upheld by numerous judicial bodies at the national, regional and international levels, both explicitly or implicitly through other rights including civil and...