A/57/292 I. Introduction 1. Pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 2002/62, entitled “Human rights of migrants”, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Ms. Graciela Rodríguez Pizarro, submits the present report to the General Assembly. In the resolution the Commission on Human Rights requested the Special Rapporteur to submit a report on her activities to the General Assembly at its fifty-sixth session and decided to extend the Special Rapporteur’s mandate for a further three-year period. 2. In the present report the Special Rapporteur reports to the General Assembly on what she has been done to protect the human rights of migrants since the establishment of her mandate in 1999. Conscious of the great responsibility and the huge task that this entails, she takes this opportunity to state her overall vision of the phenomenon of migration, as she has been doing in her annual reports to the Commission on Human Rights. II. Mandate A. International context 3. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has estimated that by 2050 there will be a total of 230 million migrants in the world. According to IOM, intra- and extraregional migratory flows are becoming increasingly diverse, with a growing proportion being made up of women. IOM also claims that migration through irregular channels is increasing and that the problem of trafficking in persons is becoming more acute. On the other hand, globalization holds out the promise of richer social and cultural exchanges through migration, which is becoming an undeniable reality in our societies. In her speech at the fifty-eighth session of the Commission on Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur said that we cannot restrict our consideration (of the migration phenomenon) to the purely economic point of view, in which we see the productivity and (labour and economic) contribution of migrants as the only values. We must adopt an integral approach from the perspective of respect for migrants’ rights, of the responsibility borne by States as guarantors of those rights and the positive contribution made by migrants at the social and cultural level. She pointed out that, over the past decade, there had been far more debate on the migration phenomenon at the multilateral and regional level. 4. The international community’s growing interest in the protection of the human rights of migrants was evidenced by the numerous recent world conferences and multilateral forums at which States had devoted extensive attention to the aspects of migration that give rise to particular concern. Among these forums, the Special Rapporteur drew particular attention to the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 (part II, paras. 33-35), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (chapter X), the Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development (chapter III), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women (chapter IV.D) and the Declaration and Plan of Action of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. The Special Rapporteur also mentioned the International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Monterrey, Mexico, from 18 to 22 March 2002. 5. The international community’s concern about the human rights of migrants led to the establishment, in 1997, of the Working Group of intergovernmental experts on the human rights of migrants and, in 1999, to the decision to appoint a special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. In 2002, the Commission on Human Rights adopted no fewer than four resolutions relating to the protection of the human rights of migrants, 1 which showed the growing interest in the topic. On 19 December 2001, the General Assembly also adopted resolution 56/170 on the protection of migrants, paragraph 5 of which reiterates “the need for all States parties to protect fully the universally recognized human rights of migrants, especially women and children, regardless of their legal status, and to treat them humanely, in particular with regard to assistance and protection”. 6. The Special Rapporteur draws attention to the renewed commitment, contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, to take measures to ensure respect for and protection of the human rights of migrants, migrant workers and their families, to eliminate the increasing acts of racism and xenophobia 5