U.S. Submissions to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants
The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Mr. Felipe González Morales, announced earlier this month that he plans to focus his June 2020 thematic report on the right to freedom of association of migrants. He put a call out for submissions on January 16, 2020, with a short deadline of January 27, 2020. The U.S. groups listed below made their submissions in response to the Special Rapporteur’s request (if there are others, please let us know in the comments below!).
A group of migrant farmworker service providers made a submission highlighting the denial of access to migrant labor camps in the United States to the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants. The submission was drafted by the Legal Aid Society of North Carolina, Inc., and was joined by Advocates for Basic Equality (ABLE), Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. (CDM), the Migrant Farm Worker Division of Colorado Legal Services, Georgia Legal Services Program, the Human Rights at Home Litigation Clinic at St. Louis University School of Law, The Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services, Michigan Immigrant Rights Center (MIRC), Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA), and Southern Migrant Legal Services (SMLS). Migrant service providers in the U.S. have been working to highlight the issue of the denial migrant labor camp access at the international level for several years. In 2012, a group of migrant service providers led by Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, Inc., submitted a complaint to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. A group of migrant service providers also submitted shadow reports on this issue to the Human Rights Committee in 2013 and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2014, as well as a stakeholder report as part of the Universal Periodic Review of the United States in 2015.
Professor Sarah Paoletti, Director of the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law made a submission to the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants highlighting the multitude of ways in which the migrants’ rights to freedom of association are directly and indirectly restricted, and the impact that has on workplace rights, access to justice, the right to seek asylum, and other related rights in migration. In her submission, Sarah uses examples primarily from the United States, but also some based in Mexico as well. Sarah is an expert on the human rights of migrants and her clinic works tirelessly to address the rights of migrants at the international level, including providing assistance to the migrant service providers with the submissions discussed above.
Kudos to these hard-working U.S. human rights advocates for managing to keep the heat on these issues!