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31. The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons aims to
regulate and improve the legal status of stateless persons. The 1961 Convention on
the Reduction of Statelessness deals with the means of avoiding statelessness.
3.
Labour standards
32. All international labour standards of the International Labour Organization
(ILO) apply to migrant workers unless otherwise stated. They include the eight ILO
fundamental rights conventions; the specific instruments concerned with the
protection of migrant workers and the governance of labour migration, namely the
Convention concerning Migration for Employment (Revised 1949) (Convention
No. 97) and the Convention concerning Migrations in Abusive Conditions and the
Promotion of Equality of Opportunity and Treatment of Migrant Workers
(Convention No. 143) of 1975, as well as other instruments that contain specific
provisions on migrant workers, such as the Convention concerning Private
Employment Agencies (Convention No. 181) of 1997 and the Domestic Workers
Convention (Convention No. 189) of 2011.
33. In addition, the non-binding Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration,
adopted in 2005, provides guidance, inter alia, on the human rights of all migrant
workers, regardless of their status, and on the regulation of recruitment agencies.
4.
Trafficking in persons
34. The Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,
Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention
against Transnational Organized Crime contains rules concerning the prevention of
trafficking, as well as assistance to and protection of victims of trafficking. It also
provides that States should consider permitting victims of trafficking to remain in
their territory, temporarily or permanently, in appropriate cases.
5.
Migrant smuggling
35. The Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air,
supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized
Crime, requires States parties to establish as a criminal offence the smuggling of
migrants. However, the criminalization requirement does not apply to the migrants
who are being smuggled. The Protocol states that migrants shall not become liable
to criminal prosecution under the Protocol for the fact of having been the object of
smuggling.
C.
Institutional framework
36. There is no migration organization within the United Nations, and no coherent
institutional framework governing migration exists.
37. States continue to attempt to govern migration largely on a unilateral basis.
This has led to a lack of coherence between global, regional and national
governance and retreat from binding United Nations-based frameworks, with state
preference for informal processes, such as the Global Forum on Migration and
Development and regional consultative processes.
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