Stand Up for Migrants
A Regional Roundtable on Reshaping Narratives on Migrants in Asia and the Pacific
Bangkok, 17 Dec. 2019
Global Priorities
Mechanisms
Development
Peace and Security
Non-Discrimination
Accountability
Participation
On 17 December 2019, in the context of International Migrants’ Day, the UN Human Rights Office organised a regional roundtable on Reshaping narratives on migration in Asia and the Pacific. This is the first regional meeting on this theme in Asia Pacific, and it follows a number of years of engagement by UN Human Rights at the global level. These efforts have sought to bring together a diverse range of actors and activists to identify and encourage innovative approaches to build human rights-based public narratives on migration; to share experiences and learn from each other’s challenges and successes; and to find ways to collaborate and support each other. A manual on Seven key elements for building human rights-based narratives on migrants and migration was disseminated at this meeting in order to provide key tools to activists.
Read the informal summary of the roundtable here.
2019: Seven Key Elements on Building Human Rights-Based Narratives on Migrants and Migration
Pervasive and fear-driven anti-migration narratives have flourished in recent years, offering up migrants as the scapegoats for deep-rooted societal problems related to the economy or security, and often actively promoted by those who employ these narratives for political, financial or other gain. Discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, hate speech and hate crime which result from such narratives have a severe impact on the human rights of migrants. UN Human Rights has developed a set of seven key elements to building human rights-based migration narratives in order to respond to the urgent need to reframe narratives and public messaging on migration and migrants to uphold and promote the human rights of all migrants. This toolkit is intended for broad use; including by organizations and institutions that work to promote the human rights of migrants, by migrants’ human rights defenders, advocacy and service organizations working with migrants, public interest lawyers, and migrants themselves.
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