Talk by Mr Ryszard CHOLEWIŃSKI on "Labour Migration in the Middle East in light of the Global Compact on Migration"

On 13 November 2018, the Natolin Academy of Migration organised a talk with Mr Ryszard CHOLEWIŃSKI, Senior Migration Specialist in the International Labour Organization’s Regional Office for Arab States in Beirut on "Labour Migration in the Middle East in light of the Global Compact on Migration".

The talk provided an overview of labour migration and mobility in the Middle East. It focused on the challenges faced across the region in governing labour migration and protecting the rights of migrant workers with respect to recruitment, wages, working conditions and social protection, and presented some case studies to illustrate these challenges. The intersection of policies relating to labour migration with those addressing the refugee crisis in the region has been also a topic of interest. The talk has been framed in the context of global debates on migration, and particularly the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which is scheduled to be adopted by UN Member States in Marrakech, Morocco in December 2018.

Mr Ryszard CHOLEWIŃSKI is the Senior Migration Specialist in the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Regional Office for Arab States in Beirut. Previously, he was the Migration Policy Specialist in the Labour Migration Branch at ILO Headquarters in Geneva. His current responsibilities include work on policy, research, training and technical cooperation activities in the Arab States region, in collaboration with ILO Headquarters, field offices and ILO’s tripartite constituents (government, employer and worker representatives), with a view to advancing ILO’s fair migration agenda. He has an academic background, having previously been a Reader in Law in the Law School at the University of Leicester (1992-2005), and has published widely on international labour migration, the human rights of migrants, and EU law and policy on asylum and migration. A selection of some of the principal publications he has worked on includes:

• Migrant Workers in International Human Rights Law: Their Protection in Countries of Employment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997);
• Borders and Discrimination in the European Union (London/Brussels: Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and Migration Policy Group, January 2002);
• Study on Obstacles to Effective Access of Irregular Migrants to Minimum Social Rights, European Committee on Migration, Strasbourg, Council of Europe (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, December 2005);
• Co-editor (with R. Perruchoud and E. Macdonald), International Migration Law: Developing Paradigms and Key Challenges (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Press, 2007);
• Co-Editor-in-Chief (with G. Appave), World Migration 2008: Managing Labour Mobility in the Evolving Global Economy (Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2008);
• Co-editor (with Paul de Guchteneire and A. Pécoud), Migration and Human Rights: The United Nations Convention on Migrant Workers’ Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010);
• (with S. Olney), "Migrant Workers and the Right to Non-discrimination and Equality" in C. Costello and M. Freedland, (eds), Migrants at Work. Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 259-281;
• (with P. Taran and L. Swepston), Migration, human rights and governance, Handbook for Parliamentarians No. 24 (Geneva, Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), ILO and OHCHR, 2015).