ARENA decided to join the IMADR appeal, A call for the Campaign Against Exploitative Migration and Human Trafficking. Full text is below.

Nowadays, neo-liberal globalization tends to be increasingly feminized and informalized, due to the polarization of the global economy where the rich get richer and the poor poorer. This is one of the root causes of exploitative migration including human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

The international community seems to deal with this problem in two ways. Firstly, the United Nations is strengthening their policies to clamp down on transnational criminal organizations, which are considered major traffickers. Secondly, the UN is trying to set up a Forum for International Migration and Development, based on the recognition that the Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved unless international migration is made part of sustainable global development.

The clampdown of traffickers and selective immigration policies are not the ultimate solutions

However, our concern is that these initiatives may well worsen, instead of improving, the situation.

Although it is true to a certain extent that arresting and punishing traffickers has positive consequences for victims of trafficking and smuggling, it also works negatively, often making them collateral victims of excessive surveillance and control.

Besides, pursuing international migration for the sake of national economic development, accompanied by the receiving countries’ selective immigration policies, will only benefit skilled labour migration, while aggravating the human insecurity of undocumented migrants.

Thus, the UN’s recent efforts to promote a campaign for “international migration and development,” combined with the War on Terror and on organized crime, may accelerate exploitative migration if not correctly guided by the concerned civil societies. We must prevent the international community from encouraging exploitative migration by increasing restrictions on unskilled labor migration while helping criminal organizations go further underground by a sweeping control of informal sectors.

The need to mainstream the combat against exploitative migration: involving NGOs working on different issues including refugee protection and HIV/AIDS

This is why we believe that an urgent need exists to launch a joint Campaign to build a process of just and sustainable development of international migration, firmly grounded on the civil society’s awareness about their common security with exploited migrants especially trafficked women and children.

The social movements around the world, combating exploitative migration and human trafficking, must join forces and develop a campaign to mainstream their activities, not leaving them only to anti-trafficking and migrants’ rights NGOs, but should become the concern of all social movements, of all the citizens, and all of the State and corporate actors of the world. In particular, it is important to involve NGOs concerned with conflict resolution, refugee protection, HIV/AIDS, village development, poverty eradication etc., so that they include in their agenda issues of exploitative migration especially human trafficking.

Take action together

We invite all concerned international, regional and national NGOs around the world to:

1. Share and accumulate their experiences and projects of their own which would lead to the elimination of human trafficking and sustainable migration, through a series of international and regional meetings, as well as through online communication and a jointly developed data base; and

2. Issue joint statements addressed to state and other actors on the occasions where migration policies are discussed internationally, as well as compile together a report on global exploitative migration analyzing the problems and proposing concrete solutions to them. The latter will be composed of different sections, each shedding light on the connection between exploitative migration and specific issue areas such as refugee protection, HIV/AIDS, etc.

Through these actions, the Campaign aims to develop a broad community of NGOs concerned with the problem of exploitative migration especially trafficking in women and children, thereby building awareness among civil societies in sending, transit and receiving countries, as well as among international, national and local governments, business communities and the media.

(February 2007)

For more information please contact:
IMADR International Secretariat
Address: 3-5-11 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0032 Japan
Phone: +81-3-3586-7447 Fax: +81-3-3586-7462 E-mail:
Contact persons: Yuriko Hara, Under Secretary-General/Program Manager
Setsuko Arai, Program Assistant

The International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) is an international non-profit, non-governmental human rights organization devoted to eliminating discrimination and racism, forging international solidarity among discriminated minorities and advancing the international human rights system. Founded in 1988 by one of Japan's largest minorities, the Buraku people, IMADR has grown to be a global network of concerned individuals and minority groups with regional committees and partners in Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America. IMADR's International Secretariat is based in Japan and maintains a UN liaison office in Geneva. IMADR is in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).