HRC50 - SRI Statement to the Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants

50th session of the Human Rights Council Item 3:
Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants
Statement by Action Canada for Population and Development
24 June 2022

Thank you, President.

Action Canada makes this statement on behalf of the Sexual Rights Initiative.

We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s focus on borders as a site of violations of the human rights of migrants.

Among other violations reported, are serious violations of migrant women’s right to health, especially to reproductive health; forced returns and pushbacks of pregnant women and new mothers, restrictions on access for humanitarian actors and civil society, families’ separation, detention in inhumane conditions including the detention of children with adults, enforced disappearances, sexual violence and death.

We regret the report’s failure to name the racism inherent in border control and anti-immigration policies.[1] As recognized by the Special Rapporteur on racism, the “border industrial complex”[2] profits from securitization, militarization and digital border enforcement technologies and all its racist causes and consequences, and is a continuation of colonial regimes of racialized governance.[3]

We also regret the report’s insufficient analysis on the multiple and historic causes of both migration and violations of migrants and refugees’ human rights.

The colonial legacy and neo-colonial system, racism and xenophobia, power relations and economic inequalities between states, mainly those in the Global North and the Global South, fragile democracies, military interventions, activities of foreign state and non-state agents, and neoliberal globalization are some of them.

We ask the Special Rapporteur to acknowledge and analyse these causes. We urge this Council and states to take meaningful measures to end human rights violations perpetrated against migrants and call for justice and accountability for these violations.

Thank you.

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[1] See for instance the Special Rapporteur on racism’s analysis on ethno-nationalist ideologies and anti-immigration policies and requirements in her report on racial discrimination in the context of in the context of laws, policies and practices concerning citizenship, nationality and immigration: A/HRC/38/52, paras 41-45.

[2] Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, focusing on on border and immigration enforcement: A/75/590, para. 16

[3] Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, focusing on on border and immigration enforcement: A/75/590, para. 3.