20/05/2015

UNHCR comments on the draft General Comment on the Right to just and favourable conditions of work (article 7 ICESCR)

The UNHCR has released its Comments on the draft General Comment on the Right to just and favourable conditions of work (art. 7 of the ICESCR). As part of its mandate, UNHCR has a direct interest in the right to work for – and in that regard to just and favourable conditions of work for – asylum-seekers, refugees and stateless persons. This paper is a landmark contribution to promote the right to work of asylum seekers and refugees. It is a most welcome text for refugees' advocates as it details the rights of refugees TO work and AT work emanating from the Geneva Convention on Refugee Status and ICESCR and clarify their content. UNHCR is the international authoritative source in charge of interpreting Geneva Convention and provide guidance that should be followed by State, institutions and non-State agents. Full text is available here.

It is also worth noting that UNHCR recalls that it has established a Memorandum of Understanding (1983) with the ILO and in 2012 explored how labour mobility can facilitate durable solutions without undermining protection principles (UNHCR and the ILO co-organized a workshop in Geneva in September 2012 on "Labour Mobility for Refugees", more information available at: http://www.unhcr.org/pages/509a85da6.html).

In providing these comments, UNHCR seeks to draw attention to two important points. Firstly, refugees and stateless persons constitute an important group of persons with specific vulnerabilities in exercising their work rights. Secondly, although refugees and stateless persons’ work rights are more specifically protected under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) 1 and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1954 Convention relating to the Protection of Stateless Persons (1954 Convention), respectively, the ICESCR constitutes an important additional source of rights for both groups. 

The ability to engage in decent work is a fundamental human right, integral to human dignity and self respect. For refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless persons, it can be crucial to their survival and self sufficiency. Indeed, without work rights, they cannot legally access labour markets, open businesses, trade in their goods, or earn wages. Work rights assist them to provide for their families and to contribute to their hosting communities. 

In exercising work rights, refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless persons can bring new skills, entrepreneurism, professional experience, goods and services to host countries, filling labour and skills shortages or gaps in local markets and benefiting refugee as well as host communities through diversification, growth and prosperity.

Commercial activities of refugees help create job opportunities for other refugees as well as locals. Furthermore, access to legal work improves the stability and safety of communities as it minimises reliance or recourse to negative coping strategies such as survival sex. 

Additionally, working allows for more interaction between refugees and host communities, and helps foster trust and peaceful coexistence. Working also prepares refugees for longer-term solutions to their predicament, whether that they return to their countries of origin, resettle in third countries or locally integrate and naturalise in the country of stay.

However, many States do not allow refugees access to their labour markets. Many are thus obliged to scrape by in the informal economy, where they risk exploitation, arrest and detention. Obstacles to exercising the right to work peacefully by refugees and stateless persons are often fuelled by antirefugee/immigrant rhetoric, xenophobia and formal and informal discrimination. Practical barriers to work include costly work permits, failure to recognise foreign acquired diplomas, language, restrictions on freedom of movement and lack of access to land for cultivation. In many other countries, legal barriers prevent refugees from working. Twenty-eight States parties to the 1951 Convention and its 1961 Protocol, which contains important provisions on the right to work, have entered reservations to these provisions.

 Further, a number of other States do not have appropriate enabling legislation in place. The lack of access to employment can contribute to perpetuating the often difficult economic circumstances of asylum-seekers, refugees and stateless persons in contravention of their right to dignity.
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Full text is available here

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