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Last Updated: Feb 6, 2017 - 2:32:04 PM |
The
Organization of American States (OAS) today highlighted the
challenges of migrants in the Americas in gaining real access to the
social security programs to which they contribute as
workers.
In a study, titled, “Migración y seguridad social en
América” (“Migration and Social Security in the Americas”), the
hemispheric Organization presented a general picture of the
relationship that exists today between migration and social security
in the region. The document was prepared jointly with the
Inter-American Center for Social Security Studies (CIESS), the
International Labour Organization (ILO), and the International
Organization for Migration (IOM).
The full report in Spanish
is available here.
The
executive summary of the report in Spanish is available here.
The
study’s final objective is the search for concrete and feasible
solutions to the protection of migrant workers, as well as the
promotion of public policies and bilateral agreements that
contribute to the access of migrants to social security in the
continent. Among the report’s conclusions are the
following:
• Temporary work programs represent a positive
step towards the promotion of orderly and regular migration among
unskilled workers. Nevertheless, these programs do not guarantee
real access to social security programs to which these workers
contribute.
• Social security policies must be accompanied by
strategies of social insertion that allow migrant workers, legal or
not, to integrate their host societies. The integration of migrants
is an important challenge among these diverse forms of temporary
work because it can lead to segregation and discrimination.
• Economic-regional programs of integration must be
complemented with measures that allow for the free movement of
manpower, and for this it is necessary to protect migrant workers’
rights of access to social security as well as to adopt bilateral or
multilateral instruments such as the Central American Agreement on
Social Security of migrant workers. Progress on regional integration
requires the adoption of measures that promote the harmonization of
countries’ different social services mechanisms.
The OAS
Executive Secretary for Integral Development, Ambassador Mauricio
Cortes Costa, highlighted that “the study we present today allows
for reflection and understanding on the relationship between
migration and social security, a subject little explored but of such
great importance. This is a permanent concern of the organizations
gathered here today, in the face of implementing social security
policies with an eye to integration and the situation of migrant
workers, who are individuals with rights.”
In the world today
there are 214 million people who are migrants, according to ILO
estimates, 57.5 million of which are in the Americas, according to
the IOM. Of them, 90 percent are migrant workers. Araceli Azuara,
Coordinator of the OAS Migration and Development Program, indicated
that, due to the clear connection between migration and work,
“understanding the relationship that exists between social security
and international migration is of paramount importance to
governments, in the countries of origin as much as in those of
transit, destination and return.” Further, she said that “this
contribution in knowledge allows governments to develop protection
mechanisms for the rights of workers that respond adequately to the
needs and characteristics of the different processes in human
mobility.”
The high-level OAS officials were accompanied via
videoconference by Juan José Zermeño and Miguel Angel Fernández
Pastor, of the CIESS; Germán López, of the ILO in Mexico; and Juan
Artola, Director of IOM in Argentina.
For
more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.
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