As the world has become a Global Village, the movement of people has become swift and more common across borders. Today, more than ever, people leave their own country and move to unfamiliar places, most often on the lookout for better living conditions. But recently, especially in the latter half of the last decade, mass cross-border movements were forced up on people who had been getting displaced by domestic conflicts, violence and abject poverty.
The plight of such people has become a daily feature in the media now-a-days, very often depicting the debilitating miseries they undergo during their arduous transport in search of greener pastures and the hardships they face in places where they land.
Such incidents have brought the predicament of migrants to the attention of the world leaders and the United Nations with its dedicated agency, International Organisation of Migration (IOM), began exerting great efforts to make the movement and life of migrants easier. Under the aegis of IOM, the world celebrates the International Day of Migration on December 18 every year to recognise the contribution of migrants to the world’s developments and to pay attention to their plight.
Qatar joined the world in honouring migrants with several activities this year and notably this year it coincided with the 70th anniversary of the establishment of IOM and the first anniversary of its office in Doha. During a function, attended by the Minister of Labour H E Dr. Ali bin Smaikh Al Marri, to mark the occasion, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs H E Ahmed bin Hassan Al Hammadi said that Qatar considers its migrant workforce as partners in development. “Qatar is witnessing an important stage in its history, which is represented in moving forward in a comprehensive and accelerated development that it has not witnessed before, and expatriate workers play a role in this development,” he said.
It is a commendable fact that Qatar has been striving hard to make the life of its migrant workforce best in the world by introducing new legislations in the past few years. Numerous amendments to the country’s labour law, setting minimum wages, a first in the region, and abolishing the Kafala system etc are a few revolutionary changes came into force. Today, Qatar is home to the offices of International Labour Organisation, IOM etc.
Despite bringing in so many changes to the existing legislations and introducing new ones, Qatar realises that there is still a lot of room for improvement. And the migrants in the country are well aware that their host country considers them as guests, not workers.
