CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE TRATADOS INDIOS

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Fifty-ninth session

Item 14 (a) of the provisional agenda

SPECIFIC GROUPS AND INDIVIDUALS:

MIGRANT WORKERS

Written statement submitted by the International Indian Treaty Council

The International Indian Treaty Council address Item 14  (A) in particular, the western hemisphere.   The IITC in the last decade has asserted, reported and maintains that the majority of the worlds migrant workers are Indigenous Peoples fleeing intolerable situations in their original homelands.  The migration patterns of indigenous peoples have increased due to the acceleration of neoliberal globalization in the last two decades.

The special rapporteur in her report acknowledged this fact two years ago.

Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island (Americas) in the last decades have been under territorial pressure and encroachment of traditional land bases caused by internal wars and depletion of our natural resources since the first invasions of our territories by foreign domination. This pattern of uneven development that usurped our original economies served to our underdevelopment as a people and catered to the development of the nation states under gunpoint jurisdictions called “constitutions”. Migration is not voluntary but forced. The migration pattern is directly related to genocide, ethnocide and sociopolitical changes than and now.

In 1992, IITC reported before this August body that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would greatly exacerbate the problems for migrants.  We predicted the result of such agreement would compound existing human rights violations. Our predictions have come to pass. We were alarmed as we saw economic globalization and neo- liberalism being shaped and advanced by carefully planned legal and institutional changes embodied in a series of international agreements. This global pattern of abuse we predicted would have the effect of wiping out jobs and livelihoods in both industrial and non-industrial countries.

 It is evident that these globalization schemes have caused massive militarization and landlessness to Indigenous Peoples, displacement, modern day slavery practices, mass layoffs via “downsizing”, “labor flexibilization”, “labor only contracting”, worsening forms of feudal and capitalist exploitation of migrants and commodification of migration, to name a few.  The false promises of globalization have added to the uneven development among nations. Indigenous Peoples know well the effects of broken treaties, agreements and undelivered promises with States.

Bolivia and Ecuador are two sui generis examples that have demonstrated the capacity to political response of Indigenous Peoples. Migrating patrons have in some form contributed to strengthen the appropriation processes of political spaces reshaping the power structures.

In Peru, internal migrations have transformed the face of the country, changing the face of a rural country into an urban one, questioning at the same time the social strata coined by the Spaniards. Since there isn’t an accelerated industrialization to absorb the migrating flow, indigenous peoples from Peru have managed to make use of the social network in reaction to the critical employment crisis existing in the misery belt of the cities

The case of ethnocide in Guatemala shoes the incapacity of the system to generate safeguards to protect local peoples, who have been victims of systematic extermination for centuries. The feudal patterns of land tenancy in Guatemala have marked the violence to which Mayan peoples have been exposed

In the case of Mexico the migratory flow of Indigenous peoples, particularly Purepecha,

Zapotecas and Mazatecos have had a monumental role in the agriculture of the United States for more than four decades and in numerous domestic services.  Over five million migrant and seasonal agricultural workers from Guatemala and the interior of Mexican states as far south as Chiapas follow the crops of the U.S. Indigenous labor is distributed from the pineapple fields of Hawaii, potato farms of Maine, strawberry fields of Washington to the celery farms of Florida.

Study after study has shown that this group of migrants to be the in most need for primary health care and disease prevention in the U.S. Death and illness by chronic pesticide poisoning continues. Health services are denied to them although they contribute via taxes to the U.S. economy.  Reports from the US General accounting office regarding pesticide use have not produced any solid results of action or safety measures as each department involved does not have the funding or political will to do anything of concrete value.  The last available report released in September of 2000 indicates, “A new approach to considering risk is partly in place”

 Adding to all this, Indigenous women of the continent have been absorbed by the migrating flows and represent a large percentage of the domestic workers core of the regions.

The U.S./Mexico border was created in 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the largest theft by annexation of indigenous lands by the United States. Native Nations such as the Kikapoo, Tohono O’ odham, Yaqui, and Cocopah had their lands divided by this border. Their societies and culture is disrupted. They have suffered abuse at the hands of border patrol agents on both sides.

Patterns of Abuse and human rights violation occur daily. These are Murders, rape, beatings, unwarranted strip searches, illegal seizure, destruction of property and identification documents, violations of due process, racist verbal abuse, arbitrary detention, deliberate separation of families, denial of food, water and medical supplies while in custody, criminalizing family reunification and massive militarization at the borders.

The “War on terrorism” has slowed US/Mexico effort to produce an accord on migration, so the issue is being played out at the border by new groups of vigilantes whose xenophobia has escalated, even though there are no reports of terrorists ever crossing the Mexican border. The Special Rapporteur notes in her report (E/cn.4/2003/85/Add.3) that both governments have made efforts thru bilateral agreements. Such agreements should be released to the public. Unfortunately, some countries of this hemisphere continue to window dress their “efforts” to intervene in support of migrants.

We are fearful that the same patterns of abuse will again magnify with the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). Unless by some miracle the Governments of the western Hemisphere quit “indicating” their intent to live up to international obligations and actually sign, ratify and implement the principles outlined in the Convention to Ensure the Human Rights and Dignity of All Migrant Workers and their Families. The convention should be included in the FTAA planning. 

We are so close yet so far, thirteen years since the convention was introduced and so much human suffering in between.

There must be one government out there that will become the 20^th signatory to the convention.

IITC would like to thank the Special Rapporteur on migrants for pointing out the range of violations. While her recommendations to the United States and Mexico are sound, we can foresee that not much will be done by the present Bush administration. The budgets for education, elderly, health have been slashed. They are not going to put funds into the education of border personnel. It was the increase in troops he past decade that drove migrants into the dangerous crossings. Two facts remain, The US needs the labor and smuggling humans is not the sole cause of death.

IITC recommends an extension of the Special Rapporteurs mandate and the full cooperation of states in fulfilling her mandate.

This report focused on why we have to leave our original homelands in the first place. An area we feel needs exploring.