Best Practices Workshops
As the Responsible Coordinator for the Migrant Workers mandate, the U.S. Government, through its Department of State (PRM Bureau), plans to carry out two interrelated activities in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.S. - based Migration Dialogue Project during year the year 2000.
The first activity involves convening a two- day workshop in Sacramento, California in late April. The objective is to bring together a group of up to forty U.S. experts from various sectors (public, private, advocacy, migrants, labor, NGOs) to develop a suggested set of "best practices" for implementation, within the U.S., of items specified in the Summit of the Americas Plan of Action. These best practices can then be given wider domestic (and possibly international) dissemination. Philip Martin, a recognized expert on migration and development, is a co-director of the "Migration Dialogue" project which (as one of its program facets) organizes periodic meetings and field trips on selected topics focusing on Migrants and Migrant labor.
The PRM Bureau and IOM plan to organize and hold a companion workshop for international experts in June at the CEPAL/CELADE headquarters in Santiago, Chile. The purpose will be to discuss and develop a set of suggested "best practices" for use within the Hemisphere in implementing the Migrant Worker section of the OAS Plan of Action. IOM is serving as the primary organizer of the event by providing assistance in selecting the experts, guiding workshop discussions and producing an after-action report containing suggested sets of "best practices."
Agricultural Migrant Labor in North America
A conference on "Agricultural Migrant Labor in North America" organized by the governments of the United States, Mexico and Canada under the auspices of NAFTA's North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), took place February 7-9, 2000. The trilateral conference enabled experts from government, business, labor, non-governmental organizations, and academia to examine legal, social, and economic issues facing agricultural migrant workers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. For more information, please see: Trilateral Conference.
Helping to ensure that the rights of migrant workers and their families will be better protected, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the International Migration Organization (IMO) signed an agreement on March 22, 2000 at the OAS headquarters in Washington D.C. Under the terms of the agreement, the IACHR and the IMO will work on joint endeavors to promote respect for and effective promotion of migrant's rights in the Americas.
http://www.summit-americas.org/Migrant%20Workers/Migrant-workers.htm