Derechos humanos y migración: el eslabón perdido

Abstract

Protection of migrants' human rights and effective management of migration (in the sense of ensuring that the movements are orderly and predictable and therefore more manageable) are closely interlinked. However, existing literature on migration and human rights, though voluminous, has hardly endeavoured to bring this nexus into shar-per focus. Policy making in the two areas has also remained largely peripheral to each other. And, despite fledging signs of a change, coalition between human rights organi-sations and migrants' associations has continued to be weak. The paper argues that the crucial nexus between human rights and migration constitutes the core of a commonalty of interests between those who are anxious to defend human rights and those concerned with better management of movement of people. Nation states have an abiding interest and inherent stake in protecting the basic rights of their own citizens even when they are abroad. This calls for close inter-state reciprocity and co-operation. Protecting these rights also helps nation states in fulfilling their obligations in other vital areas of their responsibility. The paper concludes by suggesting that a better understanding of these inter-linkages could lay the basis for a rich and proactive common agenda to which the state, human rights organisations, and migrants' associations can all creatively contribute, while ad-vancing, and remaining faithful to their own vocations. As well as bringing migrants' basic rights into the mainstream of the human rights movement, it would lend new vi-tality and dynamism to the movement itself. RESUMEN: La protección de los derechos humanos de los migrantes y la administración efectiva de la migración (en el sentido de asegurar que los traslados se hagan de manera ordenada y predecible y, por tanto, más manejables) están estrechamente