PH Promotes Concrete Steps to Implement Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) at IMRF 2022    

 Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs Sarah Lou Y. Arriola speaks as a panelist at the International Migration Review Forum Roundtable 1, 17 May 2022. (Photo from NYPM)

UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK,  23 May 2022-- Just more than three years after adopting the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM), the Philippines has made headlines in its successes in ensuring that migrations are voluntary, orderly, and regular at the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) on May 17, 2022.

“The Philippines has breathed life and embraced the GCM as seen in our laws, policies, and our bilateral and multilateral engagements,” Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs Sarah Lou Y. Arriola said at the first Roundtable of the IMRF at the United Nations Headquarters.

Undersecretary Arriola said the Philippines is committed to implement the GCM as it has been reflected in the new Chapter 21 of the country’s blueprint for development, the Philippine Development Plan. The PDP serves as the domestic implementation of the GCM, providing coherence to ongoing migration work and improving overall migration governance.

Among the reforms she highlighted was the enactment of the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) in December 2021. Considered as a Duterte Legacy, the DMW has made the Philippines a trailblazer in putting a premium on migrant protection for a post-pandemic response. 

“This has made the Philippines the first country in the world to include in its domestic law an explicit provision on the progressive realization of the 23 Objectives of the GCM. We have transformed the 23 Objectives from a moral imperative to a state obligation,” Undersecretary Arriola added.

She also cited the efforts of the Philippine government to protect over 10 million Filipino migrant workers, stranded migrants, and tourists during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Philippines has signed over 50 bilateral labor agreements and five regional agreements to improve labor mobility as well as to ensure the safety and well-being of Filipino migrant workers.

For more information, visit https://www.newyorkpm.dfa.gov.ph  https://www.un.int/philippines  or https://www.facebook.com/PHMissionNY/. END