Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All

Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families

Thirty-second session

Summary record ( p artial )* of th e 452nd meeting**

Held via videoconference, on Friday, 16 April 2021, at 12.30 p.m. Central European Summer Time

Chair:Mr. Ünver (Vice-Chair)

Contents

Organizational matters

Closure of the session

The discussion covered in the summary record began at 2 p.m.

Organizational matters

The Chair said that the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families should be a priority for all States. Given that issues related to migration featured daily in the media and affected the lives of millions, it was inexplicable that only 56 States had ratified the Convention, fewer than had ratified any of the other core international human rights treaties.

The Committee’s thirty-second session had been held online owing to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. It had been the Committee’s first online session.

During the session, the Committee had conducted a remote review of a State party’s periodic report, engaging in a virtual interactive dialogue with a large, high-level delegation from Chile, and had adopted the relevant concluding observations. At a public meeting with States and other stakeholders, in which more than 30 representatives of States, international organizations and civil society had participated, Committee members had delivered briefings on the Committee’s activities, protection of the rights of migrant workers in the context of the pandemic, collective expulsions, relevant International Labour Organization conventions, the complementary aspects of the Convention and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the situation of migrants in the countries of the Group of Five for the Sahel. In the ensuing dialogue, the Committee had discussed strategies to increase the number of States parties to the Convention.

The Committee had started its reading of the revised version of its general comment No. 5 on migrants’ rights to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention, which would continue at additional online meetings to be held on 29 and 30 April 2021. It had received briefings and written submissions from civil society organizations and United Nations entities. The Committee had also conducted an in-depth discussion with the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants about cooperation on joint initiatives and effective protection of migrant workers during the pandemic. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had provided an update on the work that, in collaboration with the Committee, it had done on migration-related issues, including through the United Nations Network on Migration and the Global Forum on Migration and Development. In addition, the Committee had adopted its annual report, subject to inclusion of the outcomes of the thirty-second session.

The Committee’s intersessional activities had included the issuance of two guidance notes – one on the impact of the pandemic on the human rights of migrants and the other on equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. Its working group on the Convention and the Global Compact had decided to turn its thematic analysis into a general comment on the areas of convergence of the two instruments. On 22 April 2021, the Committee would participate in a joint meeting with the Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on enforced disappearances in the context of migration.

Closure of the session

The Chair said that, as the current meeting was the final public meeting of the Committee’s thirty-second session, he wished to thank all those whose work had made the session possible. The closure of the session would not take place until the Committee had held the two additional meetings, both closed to the public, that it would need, as he had suggested earlier, to adopt its latest general comment.

The meeting rose at 2.10 p.m.