E/CN.4/2005/85
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(f)
From 26 to 29 October she was in New York to introduce her third report to the
Third Committee of the General Assembly. In her report the Special Rapporteur noted a
continuing deterioration in the human rights situation of migrants, in particular illegal migrants.
She also highlighted the scant attention paid to the human rights of this vulnerable group in
debates on immigration policy, and the need for those rights to be recognized in practice. She
also pointed out that traditional methods of migration management, based on internal security
considerations and specific economic interests, had been rendered obsolete by immigration in the
context of globalization. The Special Rapporteur was encouraged to see so many consultative
processes on migration management and recognized the efforts being made, as part of the
various intergovernmental initiatives, to find new ways of managing the problem effectively and
to arrive at common positions that would enable agreements to be reached. She therefore
advocated a more rights-based migration management, one rooted in States’ joint responsibility
for meeting their obligations to migrants;
(g)
On 29 and 30 November she attended a regional meeting of legislators from
Central America, Mexico and Belize on the prevention of the commercial sexual exploitation,
trade and trafficking in children, organized by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Panama. The aims of the meeting were
to deepen the legislators’ understanding and awareness of the issue and to examine the ongoing
reforms of those countries’ criminal codes, with a view to standardizing the definitions of all the
various behaviours and forms of participation that the commercial sexual exploitation of children
may encompass;
(h)
From 1 to 3 December she attended a meeting of the Technical Working Group of
the Regional Conference on Migration (Puebla Process) in Panama. The aim was to draft a
regional programme of work to combat illicit smuggling of migrants and trafficking in human
beings;
(i)
On 6 and 7 December she attended an expert workshop in Santiago, Chile, on
international migration and processes of regional integration and cooperation in the Americas,
organized pursuant to resolutions adopted by the Ad Hoc Committee on Population and
Development as part of the work of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) for the biennium 2004-2006. The workshop agenda focused on the
relationship between international migration and processes of regional integration and
cooperation in the Americas;
(j)
On 13 and 14 December she held consultations in Geneva with the staff of the
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights;
(k)
On 15 and 16 December she attended the Second International Symposium on
Migration: migration management through cooperation (Berne II), which included a
presentation of the International Agenda for Migration Management, the product of various
regional consultations held during 2004 in the framework of the Berne Initiative.
4.
Events confirmed for the first half of 2005 are listed below.