Yesterday Navi Pillay spoke at the Graduate Institute at an event entitled “Equal Rights for all Migrants? A Call for Ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families”. The discussion was organised by the Institute’s Programme for the Study of Global Migration (PSGM).

Associate Professor of International Law Vincent Chetail, also research director at the PSGM and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, opened the event saying that the subject was of great interest to the Institute as it carries out research on the limitations and potential of the Migrant Workers Convention.

During her presentation Navi Pillay said that irregular migrant workers are a particularly vulnerable group that is often subject to abuse. She said that the Migrant Workers Convention, adopted in 1990, is the best instrument currently available to protect migrant workers but that it has not been ratified by a large number of states. In particular, no migrant-receiving state in Western Europe and North America has so far ratified the Convention.

“The discussion about irregular migration often concentrates on border controls and security. The most fundamental yet neglected part of this discussion is human rights”, she said. Speaking of irregular migration, Ms Pillay said that it should be considered an administrative and not a criminal offence.

Closing her presentation she said “It is high time that states unblock the political will to ratify the convention”.

Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2008, is a South African national and served as the first non-white women of the High Court of South Africa. She was also a judge at the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The Programme for the Study of Global Migration based at the Graduate Institute, is devoted to the interdisciplinary study of migration linked to armed conflicts, generalised violence, persecution and ecological disasters. The Programme also focuses on the phenomenon of 'economic migration' and its contemporary implications.

See the video interview and read the summary of Navi Pillay’s visit to the Institute in 2010.

Some statements from the event were tweeted live on http://twitter.com/#!/IHEID.