Lima, Sept. 8, 2008.- During the First Andean Forum on Migration, held in Quito on September 4 and 5, 2008, the Andean Community reiterated its concern over the European Union’s Return Directive and proposed a series of actions to protect the rights of Andean migrants.

Those actions are spelled out in a document that the national delegations of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, the CAN Member Countries, and Chile, as an Associate Member Country, decided to submit to their corresponding Foreign Ministries for consideration. 

The Forum, formally opened by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador and in which the CAN Secretary General participated, addressed priority issues concerning the recognition of man as the center of all political action processes and the reaffirmation of people’s free movement as an inalienable human right.  

The delegations committed themselves to completing the regulation of the Andean Community’s socio-labor instruments, which will guarantee the full applicability of the principle of national treatment for Andean migratory workers within the Subregional Community.  They also expressed the need to advance firmly toward starting up the Simón Rodríguez Socio-labor Convention.

They, further, recommended, in accordance with international law, drawing attention to the fact that characterizing migrants in an irregular situation as “illegal” is one of the elements that permits the conversion of minor administrative violations into crimes.

In this context, the delegations reaffirmed their determined will to establish mechanisms for continuous dialogue, pursuant to the commitments assumed through the LAC-EU Declaration of Lima of May 16, 2008. 

They also recommended urging the European Union to hold talks, with a view to establishing procedures and mechanisms for regularizing the situation of still irregular Andean migrants, in keeping with the specificity of migration from our region. 

Lastly, they agreed that it would be appropriate for the Andean Community Member Countries and Chile, as an Associate Member Country, to start designing an Andean Human Development Plan for Migrations, in which man is recognized as the center of all political action, with the consequent respect for basic human rights.