Nepal vows to advocate rights of migrant workers at int’l meet

Kathmandu, November 12

Nepal has committed to advocate the rights of migrant workers.

While addressing a programme titled ‘International Conference on Protection of Rights of Migrant Workers’, Minister for Labour, Employment and Social Security Gokarna Bista committed to provide basic rights advocated by the International Labour Organisation to all types of workers, especially migrant workers.

“The government is committed to ensuring human rights and other types of rights of migrant workers,” Bista said, adding that collaboration between the labour sending and receiving countries was necessary for better outcome in migration sector.

He further stated that the Nepal government is committed to its stance on Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) principles and will soon formulate broader framework to minimise the suffering of migrant workers.

The GCM conference, which was held in Morocco recently, was an intergovernmental conference to deal with issues related to migration and migrant workers. At the end of the conference, leaders from 164 countries had inked a global pact that sets in action a plan ‘to prevent suffering and chaos’ for global migration.

Today was the first day of a two-day programme organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The international conference has set the objective of preventing possible human trafficking under the guise of foreign employment and ensuring human rights of migrant workers.

Apart from Carlos Alfonso Negret Mosquera, chair of Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, the conference is being attended by migration experts, activists and stakeholders from more than a dozen countries including Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, South Africa, Qatar, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, among others.