Asian human rights officials to discuss migrants' rights at Seoul forum

SEOUL, Nov. 7 (Yonhap) -- Human rights officials from across Asia will gather in Seoul next week to discuss ways of preventing discrimination against migrant workers and foreign brides in Korea, a rights watchdog said Friday.

Seoul will host the three-day forum, titled "International Conference on Human
Rights of Migrants and Multi-cultural Society," with the support of the Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the National Human Rights Commission
said.
Bertrand G. Ramcharan, a former acting U.N. high commissioner for human rights,
will give a keynote speech, while about 30 senior officials from human rights
commissions and experts from six Asian countries -- Indonesia, Malaysia,
Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand -- will share their views on
migrants' issues.
The countries are the main source of migrant workers and foreign brides in South
Korea, the watchdog explained.
Discrimination of migrants and their biracial children has emerged as a major
social issue in Korea since the 1990s amid the influx of industrial workers from
other Asian countries and women who marry Korean men, mostly farmers. About one
million foreigners reside here, many from Southeast Asia, and fill in the labor
vacuum at low-paying, labor-intensive industrial complexes.
"Korea faces a growing need to develop pro-human rights and multi-ethnic policies
as it has entered the phase of a multi-cultural society due to the influx of
immigrants," the watchdog said in a statement.
The participants are scheduled to visit the Ansan Migrants' Center, a major
Southeast Asian workers' community south of Seoul, and adopt a Seoul declaration
to build a cooperation system among their human rights commissions, it said.
The forum that starts Monday also marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N. Human
Rights Declaration, it said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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