Migrants: Each of them has a name and a story

To mark International Migrants Day on Sunday December 18, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is calling on the world community to come together and remember the refugees and migrants who have lost their lives or have disappeared while trying to reach safe harbour after arduous journeys across seas and deserts.  

 
IOM has invited people all over the world to hold the first global candlelight vigil on December 18 to commemorate the migrants whose lives have been lost this year. Each of them has a name, a story and left their homelands seeking better opportunities and safety for themselves and in many cases for their families -- aspirations that all of us strive for.   

According to a United Nations statement, migration draws increasing attention in the world these days. Mixed with elements of unforeseeability, emergency, and complexity, the challenges and difficulties of international migration require enhanced cooperation and collective action among countries and regions.   

The UN says it is actively playing a catalyst role in this area, with the aim of creating more dialogue and interaction within countries and regions, as well as propelling experience, exchange and collaboration opportunities.   

This new era has created challenges and opportunities for societies throughout the world. It also has served to underscore the clear linkage between migration and development, as well as the opportunities it provides for co-development, that is, the concerted improvement of economic and social conditions at both origin and destination, the UN says.   

For the past four decades especially, this issue has emerged high on the list of Sri Lanka’s priorities. For instance there are about two million workers -- including a large number of women and girls from rural areas -- who have migrated to the Middle East and other countries in search of employment. So much so the amount of dollars sent by them has emerged as Sri Lanka’s biggest source of foreign exchange. This means that Sri Lanka’s population of more than 21 million, including a minority comprising the rich and ruling elite, are surviving on the earnings of the rural workers, most of whom are forced to work more than 12 hours a day while girls and women including mothers are known to have been physically or sexually abused. Some of them have even been killed or have died in mysterious circumstances with their organs including kidneys being removed and apparently sold for huge sums.   

Added to all these ugly and humiliating aspects are the multi-million dollar rackets involving illegal and even registered foreign job agents. In one of the latest cases, the foreign employment ministry has been accused of involvement in foreign job rackets amounting to more than US dollars 150 million. On Wednesday, Minister Thalatha Athukorala strongly denied these allegations made to the Commission Investigating Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC). She warned that she would sue the complainants and the money obtained, if the libel case succeeded, would be given to the poor people of her electorate in Ratnapura.   

Such determination and noble deeds apart, it is obvious that foreign job rackets are still rampant while the physical or sexual abues of Sri Lankan workers also go on. The national government has assured that by setting up huge industrial zones mainly in rural areas, starting with the 5,000 acre industrial zone around the Hambantota Port, tens of thousands of new, productive and well paid jobs would be created and there would be less of a need for rural people especially girls and women to go overseas for employment.   

We hope this works out effectively without party political interference or the bribes-for-jobs disease, so that the migration crisis -- one of the ugly features in Sri Lanka’s image -- could be removed in a just and fair manner.