| Summary: | Peer reviewed The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICRMW) entered into force on 1 July 2003, some 13 years after it had been formally opened for ratifi cation in 1990. It has, however, attracted very little in the way of support from states: the recent ratifi cations by Argentina and Albania, in 2007, have increased the number of States Parties to a mere 37 – a fi gure that is, by some considerable distance, the lowest of any of the instruments viewed by the Offi ce of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as “core” human rights treaties. This lack of success becomes all the more apparent upon consideration of the fact that not one major migrant receiving state is among the parties to the Convention. The purpose of this report is to analyse the reasons behind non-ratifi cation in one of the most developed migrant-receiving regions in the world: the European Economic Area, which includes the 27 Member States of the European Union and Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway. The main body of this report presents the fi ndings of a series of detailed, UNESCOcommissioned reports into the situation of the ICRMW in a number of countries in the region: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom and Norway. The reports were based upon semi-structured interviews carried out with major migration stakeholders in each country, including, inter alia, government offi cials from both central and regional authorities, members of other political parties, and representatives of civil society (i.e., relevant NGOs and trade unions), on such issues as general awareness of the Convention, the nature and extent of any political or parliamentary activity carried out regarding it, and the main obstacles to ratifi cation. The summary and analysis of the fi ndings of these studies takes up Parts I-IV. Part V goes on to examine in some detail the situation regarding the ICRMW within the highly developed legal and political system of the European Union, ...
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