Church calls on authorities to ratify international conventions protecting migrant workers

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church [UGCE] has called on the authorities to ratify the European Convention on the Legal Status of Migrant Workers.

At a roundtable entitled “The challenges of migration: the view of the Church”, the UGCE “Justice and Peace” Commission appealed to the President, the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and the Prime Minister to ratify both the European Convention on the Legal Status of Migrant Workers and the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers. 

A member of the “Justice and Peace” Commission stressed that it was vital to pay attention to the factors contributing to migration from Ukraine, these including corruption, bureaucracy, unemployment and poverty.

While acknowledging the state’s work on reaching bilateral agreements on the status, social and pension security of migrants, the Commission nonetheless stressed the problems still existing and asked the authorities to ratify the above-mentioned Conventions.

A Commission member Hryhory Seleshchuk said that at present Ukraine had reached less than ten agreements on pension provisions and aid where a person is unable to work. With only one exception, all these had been made with countries of the former Soviet Union and neighbouring countries.

The Commission also speak in their appeal of the need to implement the recommendations of the Council of Europe on the rights of migrants with unregulated status and to draw up a strategy for migrant policy which would include mechanisms of socio-economic and everyday adaptation of people returning to Ukraine.