Governments should include returning workers, many of whom had lost jobs overnight, in their social protection measures and reintegrate them into national labor markets, the International Labor Organization said in a report, Reuters reported.

“This is a potential crisis within a crisis,” Manuela Tomei, director of the ILO’s conditions of work and equality department, told a news conference.

There are an estimated 164 million migrant workers worldwide, nearly half of them women, accounting for 4.7% of the global labor force, according to the ILO. Many work in health care, transport, domestic work, and agriculture.

Their remittances are key for their families and economies back home, Tomei said, citing a report from the World Bank that a $100 billion drop in remittances was forecast by year-end.

Nearly a million migrant workers have returned to South Asia alone, said Michelle Leighton, chief of labor migration at ILO.

They include 500,000 Nepalese who returned from India, more than 250,000 Bangladeshis from the Middle East, 130,000 Indonesians, 100,000 Burmese, and 50,000 Filipinos, mostly seafarers, ILO figures show.

Ethiopia expects from 200,000 to 500,000 migrants to return by year-end, Leighton added.

“There are serious problems with their eligibility for social protection, when they come back, for instance, they are not able to take their social security entitlement and that is a function of the need for cooperation between the sending and receiving countries,” Leighton said.

Large numbers of migrant workers in the Persian Gulf countries are affected by job losses, with more than 90,000 believed to have left Kuwait since April, said Ryszard Cholewinski of ILO’s Beirut office.

But not all left jobless in the region want to repatriate, he said, adding that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have relaxed restrictions on changing employers.

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The Interior Ministry has delegated the task to the labor ministry to stand up for the rights of working children with Tehran being the top priority, the secretary for the Convention on the Rights of the Child said.

The right to have a family, the right to education and the right to health and social services are recognized for all children and working children should also benefit from these rights, Mahmoud Abbasi explained.

Abbasi called for “precise and coherent” programs so that laboring children would not return to their previous situation after undergoing such plans.

Referring to the vast presence of foreign laboring children in Iran, Abbasi said, “We have come up with plans for laboring children on humanitarian grounds.”

Abbasi, however, didn’t elaborate on the details of the plans for recognizing, regulating street and working children and claiming their rights.

On the related subject, MP Mohammad Kazemi has said earlier this month that the law on children’s right is still being hammered out in the Majlis (the Iranian parliament) and it will be adopted by the end of the [Iranian calendar] month of Bahman (February 19).

The International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989 and sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children.

Trying to improve the life of laboring children, Iran signed the convention in 1991 but it seems that far more measures are needed to tackle this social challenge and that Iran is still in the beginning of the road.

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Hundreds of protesters brandished red smoke canisters as they marched to the Ministry of Labor, carrying flags and banners. Protesters claim that the cuts implemented by Macron’s reforms of the labor market, will hurt the commerce and services sector workers.

(Source: Ruptly)

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