When we talk about looking beyond emergencies, the impression will be that the conditions that create these emergencies are being addressed including working to restore peace and safety to areas where conflicts are raging and the tireless and genuine work to boost a fair global wealth distribution and a disciplined climate management regime.

Even when people are forced to move, the natural thinking is always to seek opportunities to preserve, improve and promote socio-economic welfare of ones self and members of their families.

One of the ways of improving opportunities for refugees and migrants will be to look at improving the global governance of migration where the human rights of migrants are situated consciously at policy and programme initiatives. Critical to achieving better governance, it is our considered view that the International Labour Organisation, as an organ of the UN, should be consciously engaged and partnered by the UNCTAD so that it may benefit from the skills, expertise and competences on migration and workers’ rights governance. Already, the ILO this year has started the discussion on how to address issues of conflict, safety and the resilience for refugees and migrants.

Linked to the previous point is the need to call for and achieve easy and predictable paths to formal employment for potential refugees and migrants. Currently they come from source countries to encounter recruitment procedures and practices that are used to exploit and enslave them. In essence, Chair, the issue of cost of recruitment should not be borne by migrants when effective regulation guidelines are in place and enforced.

Of course, it is important that opportunities that will facilitate stress-free and predictable arrangement for potential migrants who make the choice to remain in transit countries given the dynamisms of demand and supply side mix.
Furthermore, ITUC calls on delegates to this Session to seriously prioritize and focus on strategies to resolve issues of social protection portability, affordability and crucially, access both for those who possessed it before their forceful removal from their communities, as well as for those who lack coverage.

This leads me to the issue of effective internal mobilization of resources for the creation and sustaining of social protection for refugees and migrants. Resource deficits exists among most sourcing and sending countries. Thus, we call on UNCTAD 14 to accord UNCTAD the latitude, space and mandate to effectively pursue global taxation governance.