U.N. report criticizes U.S. treatment of migrants

America does not adequately protect the human rights of noncitizens, says an investigator. He takes aim at increased detentions, saying they are overused.

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 8, 2008

The United States has failed to uphold its international obligations to protect the human rights of migrants, subjecting too many to prolonged detention in substandard facilities while depriving them of an adequate appeals process and labor protections, a United Nations investigator said Friday.

In the international body’s first scrutiny of U.S. treatment of its 37.5 million noncitizen migrants, U.N. investigator Jorge Bustamante took particular aim at what he criticized as the “overuse” of detention for immigrants. Noting that the annual detainee population has tripled in nine years to 230,000, he called on the United States to eliminate mandatory detention for certain migrants and instead expand the use of alternatives, such as electronic ankle bracelets.

Bustamante, who visited Los Angeles last year during a three-week fact-finding mission, also urged that migrants be given the right to legal counsel, more impartial hearings and improved holding facilities, particularly for women and children.

“The United States lacks a clear, consistent, long-term strategy to improve respect for the human rights of migrants,” said his report, which was presented Friday to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. Bustamante serves as the body’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.

In a statement to the council, the U.S. delegation called the report disappointing.

The report “focuses only on a narrow slice of the migrant population in the United States and makes no effort to recognize notable, positive aspects of U.S. migration policy,” the statement said. “This results in an incomplete and biased picture of the human rights of migrants.”

The delegation said the United States had one of the world’s most generous immigration policies and offered more than 11 million migrants green cards, citizenship, asylum, refugee resettlement and temporary protected status between 2000 and 2006. The United Nations estimates that global migrants number 200 million, with the United States by far the largest haven, with 35 million as of 2000.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Kelly Nantel also criticized Bustamante, saying he did not adequately consider the voluminous information provided him by U.S. officials documenting migrant protections in place here.

Those include the right to seek administrative review of detention and deportation decisions, along with access to federal courts to challenge removal orders.

Bustamante “has made a number of inaccurate or misleading claims and has drawn sweeping conclusions that appear to be based on anecdotal evidence from a small sample of individuals, for which he fails to provide appropriate evidence and reasoning,” Nantel said.

At the U.S. government’s invitation, Bustamante visited seven cities last year to interview dozens of migrants, community activists, immigration attorneys and senior government officials. He toured the U.S.-Mexican border and visited a federal detention center in Arizona, but he was denied access to other facilities in Texas and New Jersey.

In his two-day visit to Los Angeles in May, Bustamante said he was concerned about “rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States” and took testimony about worker abuse, government raids, family separations and other issues. In his report, he wrote that xenophobia and racism toward migrants had worsened since the Sept. 11 attacks, with a particularly devastating effect on children, Afro-Caribbean migrants, and those perceived to be Muslim or ethnic South Asians and Middle Easterners.

But the report said that two federal laws passed in 1996 accounted for the biggest changes toward a stricter approach in U.S. immigration policy. Among other things, the laws increased the number of people subject to mandatory, prolonged and indefinite detention, including those who commit an expanded list of crimes such as minor drug offenses, the report said. The laws also reduced avenues of appeal and limited judges’ discretion to grant migrants the right to remain in the United States.

The growing reliance on detention tears families apart and costs U.S. taxpayers $1.2 billion a year, the report said. In contrast, alternatives such as electronic monitoring are far cheaper — about 20% of the cost of detention, according to a 2006 congressional report.

Human rights activists hailed the report as an important and independent voice that brings public attention to problems faced by migrants.

“The U.S. touts the importance of human rights abroad, but rhetoric doesn’t match the reality at home,” said Chandra Bhatnagar of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York. “All we are asking is to bring human rights home.”

 Delegates:

BMUN 56 will be taking place in less than a week. As your prepare for next weekend’s conference, you may have questions about BMUN, the Bay Area, UC Berkeley, etc. Please use this blog to voice any of your questions, comments, or concerns. You can also email me directly at: rsandoval (at) berkeley.edu.

I am excited about meeting everyone soon!

-Roxana

March 8th is International Women’s day.

Here is an article about the UN calling for more investment in women. Officials are calling for more investment in women’s reproductive health and education.  Also, the UN is urging nations to bridge the gap between policy and practice when it comes to women’s issues.

What is your country doing to improve the health and education of women and girls?

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25905&Cr=women&Cr1=international

Marking International Day, top UN officials urge greater investments in women

8 March 2008 – Top United Nations officials commemorated this year’s International Women’s Day by calling on countries to invest more in women and girls, warning that failing to do so will undermine efforts to achieve global development targets.In his message for the Day, Secretary-General drew attention to the “serious” gap between policy and practice in many countries when it comes to gender equality, as reflected in a lack of resources and insufficient budgetary allocations.“This failure of funding undermines not only our endeavours for gender equality and women’s empowerment as such; it also holds back our efforts to reach all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” he said, referring to the global pledges to slash poverty and other social ills, all by 2015.“As we know from long and indisputable experience, investing in women and girls has a multiplier effect on productivity and sustained economic growth,” he added, noting that no measure is more important in advancing education and health, including the prevention of HIV/AIDS, or as likely to improve nutrition, or reduce infant and maternal mortality.Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), agreed that “if we want to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we need more investments in women and girls.“Whether we are looking at it from a human rights, political or economic point of view, the conclusion is the same: It makes sense to invest in women. The returns are high for women themselves and for the world at large,” she said.

However, not only were investments still not being made to the extent they should be, they were actually declining in some areas, such as maternal health and family planning.

“Improving women’s well-being cannot be accomplished without improving their health, particularly their reproductive health,” she stressed, noting that by ensuring universal access to reproductive health, it will be possible to reduce poverty, reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS, and meet the need for family planning.

“By investing in women’s reproductive health and well-being, we will stand a better chance of achieving the MDGs and making gender equality a reality.”

Part of the struggle for women’s rights and gender equality is the urgent need to end violence against women in all of its forms, a point highlighted by the acting Executive Director of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), who drew attention to the UN campaign launched by the Secretary-General on 25 February, UNiTE to End Violence against Women.

“The campaign will add value and visibility to the efforts that Governments, women’s and other civil society organizations, UN and donor partners are making to combat gender-based violence and send the message that ending violence against women stands on par with other critical development goals,” said Joanne Sandler.

She added that it also comes at a time when the world’s leaders are renewing their commitment to financing for all national development goals, including the MDGs.

“Ending violence against women was a missing indicator in the MDGs, owing to the lack of comparable data,” she stated. “It is encouraging, therefore, that the United Nations has also committed to assist countries in efforts to generate the data needed to measure the extent of violence against women and girls.

“Together with proven evidence of what works and the financial and technical resources needed to support countries to meet the implementation challenge, there may indeed be an end in sight to the pandemic of violence against women and girls ? and genuine progress on achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment,” Ms. Sandler said.

From Afghanistan to Sudan, women around the world are celebrating the Day through events at the local and national levels. In the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur, staff of the new African Union-UN mission there (UNAMID) handed out T-shirts and posters to women in the central market in El Fasher, and held a procession along with Sudanese female police officers and local residents.

Hundreds of women in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar marched for peace, while their sisters in the capital gathered in Kabul’s women’s garden to mark the Day with a UN agency fair, which included films and a performance by child artists. Female counsellors from UN agencies were also on hand to provide advice on health, education and social issues facing the country’s women.

Here is a link to a good summary about the migration of refugee women.

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/meetings/consult/CM-Dec03-EP8.pdf

A Ugandan study found that HIV/AIDS deaths can be decreased if local workers assist patients with their drug regimen.

Perhaps this article can provide some ideas for possible resolutions?
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN923764.html

Home-based programmes cut African AIDS deaths - study

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - Providing HIV drug cocktails to people in their homes can cut AIDS-related deaths substantially in poor, rural areas of Africa, researchers said on Friday.

A study in Uganda showed that hiring local health workers to help people stick to a strict regimen of drugs cut the number of AIDS deaths by more than 90 percent.

“These results were achieved even though no routine clinic visits were scheduled after initial enrolment, and home visits were provided by trained lay providers,” Jonathan Mermin, a researcher at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and colleagues wrote in the journal Lancet.

Drug cocktails called highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, can keep people healthy for years even if they never eradicate the AIDS virus, which infects more than 20 million people in Africa.

The treatment is increasingly available in the region but patients need to follow medication instructions and require constant monitoring. This can prove difficult for people in poor areas where health clinics are far away, Mermin said.

“We wanted to find a way where people could avoid going to the health clinic,” Mermin, who is based in Kenya, said in a telephone interview.

The researchers hired local health workers and taught them skills such as administering the drugs and conducting HIV tests. Weekly visits helped identify people unaware they were infected and got them on the life-extending drugs, Mermin said.

Deaths of people on antibiotics and the HIV drugs fell 95 percent, the study found.

The number of orphans dropped 93 percent and deaths of children under 10 dropped 81 percent, the researchers said.

The home visits were also linked to a large reduction in deaths of children who did not have HIV, a finding that suggests getting people on to the drugs benefits the entire family, Mermin said.

“It worked incredibly well,” Mermin said. “We had some of the highest adherence rates ever recorded.”

More than 33 million people globally are infected with HIV which is incurable. There is no vaccine and drugs that can help control the infection do not stop its spread and are not available to most people.

We have received emails asking about the March 1st position paper deadline. Position papers that are postmarked by March 1st will qualify for committee awards. Although I would like to accept position papers via email, submitting position papers through the mail is more reliable. I say this because I receive a lot of emails and spam and I do not want to mistakenly overlook any position papers.

-Roxana

Here is a link for a powerpoint presentation called “Women on the Move” by Francois J. Bouruignon, Sr. Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank.  The powerpoint has a lot of facts, graphs, and charts that are useful. 

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/FBWomenOnTheMove.pdf

Here’s a quick list of 10 facts about the migration of women and girls. That was compiled by Hania Zlotnik, the Director of the Population Division of the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Ten points about the international migration of women and girls
Hania Zlotnik, Director

Population Division

Department of Economic and Social Affairs

United Nations

www.ony.unu.edu/seminars/2006/DAWvideoconference/ Zlotnik%20-%20Migration%20of%20women%20and%20girls.doc

1. In 2005 there were an estimated 95 million female migrants and 96 million male migrants in the world. That is, female migrants accounted for 49.6 per cent of all international migrants.

2. Between 1990 and 2005, the global number of female migrants increased by 19 million while that of male migrants increased by 17 million. Consequently, the proportion of female migrants worldwide increased from 49 per cent in 1990 to 49.6 in 2005.

3.In the more developed regions1, female migrants outnumber male migrants by an important margin: there were 60 million female migrants in developed countries in 2005 compared to 55 million male migrants. In the less developed regions2, there were 35 million female migrants, 6 million less than the 41 million male migrants estimated in 2005.

4. Female migrants tend to be concentrated in countries with more equitable gender relations. Thus, 67 per cent of all female international migrants live in developed countries. In countries where women’s status is low, women tend to be underrepresented among international migrants. For instance, in Western Asia, female migrants account for just 38 per cent of all international migrants.

5. Females are part of every type of migration. They enter countries of destination as permanent immigrants, migrant workers, highly-skilled migrants, students, refugees, asylum-seekers. Females are also part of the groups of migrants who enter without authorization or find themselves in irregular situations.

6. In many countries, high proportions of migrants are admitted because they are close relatives of citizens or other international migrants already settled in the country. Women are more likely than men to be part of this category of international migrants known as the “family reunification” stream. It is often easier for a wife to join a husband settled abroad than for a husband to gain approval to join a wife settled abroad. That is, State provisions allowing admission for family reunification tend to favour women.

7. Since at least the 1980s, the participation of women in temporary labour migration streams has become more evident, with rapid increases in some regions. In Asia, in particular, the flow of female migrant workers to the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and to the newly industrializing countries of South-eastern Asia increased markedly. In some countries of origin, female migrant workers have at times outnumbered or been similar to those of male migrant workers. However, overall, the female migrant workers in the countries of destination are significantly outnumbered by male migrant workers.

8. Even when women are admitted as migrants under categories other than “migrant worker” they tend to join the labour force. Data on the labour force participation of foreigners in European countries indicate that foreign women have, in general, a lower labour force participation that national women and lower than that of foreign men. Such a difference remains when the presence of young children or the educational levels of workers are controlled for.

9. Female migrants appear to be more likely than male migrants to become naturalized citizens of countries of destination in the developed world. Naturalization may indicate that at least some female migrants find it easier to integrate to the receiving society. However, in cases where particular groups of international migrants are finding it difficult to integrate, female migrants are having greater difficulty to do so than their male counterparts.

10. As with international migration in general, generalizations about female migration are often misleading if not inaccurate. Women who become international migrants have a wide array of experiences and attention is often focused only on one side of the spectrum: the negative one. There is a need to balance this view by finding out more about the positive effects of migration on female migrants and the contributions that they make to their families and the societies that host them or those they come from. For instance, we need to know more about women who migrate in search of better educational opportunities, about the migration of highly-skilled female migrants, about the participation of female migrants in entrepreneurial activities, about the effect of female migration on health systems both at origin and destination, about the relative risks of migration for females and males, including health risks.

President Bush is visting Africa.  Since 2003, the United States has spent $15 Billion dollars in an effort to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS. Currently, Bush is asking the U.S. congress for and additional $30 billion dollars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7247370.stm

*Edit* Here is another link about the failure of an anti-HIV gel for women.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/18/MNH9V2LUT.DTL&type=health

Here is a quick news update: 

CNN has a 2 minute video on how UNESCO and the Cuban Government have been working to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/02/07/neill.cuba.santeria.vs.aids.cnn?iref=videosearch

Any thoughts?