The case for accepting the MWC
The 2004 Annual Report of the Foreign Office on Human Rights claims that the UK has ratified every major international human rights treaty. However, the UK is not party to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (MWC). The MWC, which entered into force in July 2003, is widely acknowledged as one of seven core UN human rights treaties, yet it is conspicuously absent from the list of major international treaties recognised by the FCO report.

The MWC extends basic human rights to all migrant workers and their families throughout the entire migration process, and proposes policies to promote equitable and lawful international migration. It accords additional rights to documented migrant workers but, perhaps most importantly, protects a core of human rights for all migrants, regardless of their legal status in the host country. It includes measures to eliminate the smuggling and trafficking of migrant workers and to prevent their employment in exploitative situations.

In 2002, then Immigration Minister Angela Eagle stated that the UK government “[has] no plans at present to sign or ratify the Convention”. The government claims that its policies already strike the “right balance between the need for immigration control and the protection of the interests and rights of migrant workers and their families”. However, evidence collected by various NGOs suggests otherwise. In particular, no legislation exists to protect migrants from the retention of their identity documents by employers, a practice which is used to pressure workers to accept sub-standard wages and poor working conditions. 49% of domestic workers who registered between 2001 and 2003 with Kalayaan, an NGO that supports migrant domestic workers in the UK, reported that they had had their passports taken by employers. Significantly, Article 21 of the MWC prohibits the confiscation of migrant workers’ identity documents.

On 7 February 2005, the UK government released its five-year strategy for asylum and immigration. This plan has been criticised for potentially exacerbating the vulnerability of migrant workers and their families. The net effect of these proposals is to curtail legitimate labour migration routes: as the chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service has argued, this will increase the likelihood that “more workers will be sucked into the economy via smugglers and traffickers, with appalling consequences of exploitation”. Better arrangements for legal immigration, rather than expanding what constitutes illegal immigration, would mean that fewer would-be migrant workers would feel forced to claim asylum as a means of gaining entry to the country. It is encouraging, in this respect, that the Prime Minister has firmly expressed the government’s continuing commitment to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, so that the UK remains open to those fleeing persecution and conflict.

It merits considering how the UK government’s past refusal to sign up to the MWC affects the UK’s capacity for setting standards in a system which depends so fundamentally upon the independent compliance of national governments.

The High-Level Panel and UN reform
In addition to ensuring that UK domestic policies conform to international human rights standards set by the UN, the UK should seek also to contribute to the institutional reform of the UN’s human rights machinery which, according to the High-Level Panel, is being seriously “undermined by eroding credibility and professionalism”. High-Level Panel, is being seriously “undermined by eroding credibility and professionalism”. In response to this situation, the Report makes a number of immediate and longer-term recommendations:

Although the government has indicated an overall approval of the Report, it has yet to respond formally to the specific proposals. As governments debate the High-Level Panel’s proposals in advance of the September summit, it is hoped that the UK government will lend its full international influence to the reform of the UN’s human rights institutions.

Conclusion
“Where we are shown to have failed to respect international human rights and humanitarian law,” the FCO states in its 2004 Annual Report, “we aim to make good these failings.” This receptivity to change is welcome, but ultimately it is not enough. The UN’s capacity for the promotion and protection of human rights around the world depends upon the unwavering support of powerful governments such as that of the UK. By ratifying the Migrant Workers Convention, by extending the right to individual petition to all relevant UN instruments, by removing unconstructive treaty reservations, and by lending its full support to UN’s human rights reform, the UK government will do much to ensure the UN is thus equipped.