Social Security Is Right of Migrant Workers
By Xenia Scheil-Adlung
Health and social security are human rights anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These rights are tightly connected to occupational health, safety at work and social protection in health.
The majority of migrant workers suffer health risks due to poor working conditions and low incomes making health services unaffordable.
In the past 15 years, the number of migrants has soared. In this globalized world, thousands of men and women cross national borders each year in search of better economic opportunities: Accordingly to U.N. data, the number of migrant workers amounted to 191 million in 2005.
Usually, the health status of migrant workers is lower than that of the host population, with illegal migrants reporting even worse off in this regard than their legal counterparts: In certain OECD countries, migrants are five times more likely to be diagnosed with tuberculosis pregnancy related deaths are far higher than that of local women.
In addition, migrants are exposed to occupational hazards that significantly impact on their health. This concerns particularly migrants working in the informal economy and in mining, construction, heavy-manufacturing and agriculture jobs.
Many of them have no or limited social protection against ill health due to diseases or accidents in the host country.
Further, most migrants cannot afford to pay for care or be insured through private insurance or they do not have the required documents to prove their eligibility for formal health protection schemes.
As a result, each year an estimated two million women die due to work-related diseases and occupational accidents.
Across the globe, there are some 270 million occupational accidents and 160 million work-related diseases each year, according to ``ILO Facts on Safety at Work 2005.''
Social protection in health can secure affordable access to health services even for the poorest among migrant workers and their families.
It consists of tax, contribution or premium funded benefits provided through national health services, social health and accident insurance, social assistance and other forms of social security aiming at universal coverage of the population.
Against this background, the ILO Strategy Towards Universal Access to Health Care has been developed. It addresses issues related to access deficits to health services.
The ILO strategy allows for coverage of migrant workers under the health protection schemes in both origin and destination countries.
It advocates the establishment of voice and representation, strengthening of the role of labor unions and employers associations, increase in public awareness and information and the forging of ILO standards, international conventions and bilateral agreements between countries.
Social protection and migrant workers' issues and approaches to address related concerns will be discussed at the 2008 World Congress on Safety and Health in Seoul. A symposium will be conducted today at COEX in southern Seoul for this purpose.
The writer, who serves as health policy coordinator of the Social Security Department at the International Labor Office in Geneva, contributed the following article to The Korea Times on the occasion of the 2008 World Congress on Safety and Health in Seoul which ends today. ― ED.