MANILA — The Philippines reaffirmed its commitment to stronger protections for overseas workers at the International Migration Review Forum in New York this week, with the country’s top migration official saying Manila remains a driving force in shaping global labor mobility policy.
Department of Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Leo Cacdac said the Philippines actively participated in high-level discussions on global migration governance and the implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, known as the GCM.
“The purpose of the IMRF is a global review on the implementation of the Global Compact of Migration, and as you know, the DMW has as one of its core mandates the implementation of the GCM and its objectives,” Cacdac told reporters at a media briefing Thursday.
The Philippines contributed to multiple roundtable discussions covering labor rights, remittances and financial education, ethical recruitment, consular cooperation and reintegration programs for returning overseas Filipino workers. The country co-chaired one roundtable alongside Nigeria, a role Cacdac said underscored Manila’s active hand in crafting international migration policy.
Bilateral Talks on the Sidelines
On the margins of the forum, Cacdac held bilateral meetings with officials from India and Lithuania, centering on labor migration governance and workforce mobility cooperation.
Both the Philippines and India rank among the world’s top labor-sending nations, supplying millions of workers across healthcare, construction, domestic services and other sectors — primarily to the Middle East, North America and Europe.
Abu Dhabi Dialogue
Talks with India also touched on the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, a regional cooperation mechanism established in 2008 that brings together Asian labor-sending countries and Gulf Cooperation Council states. The Philippines currently holds the chairmanship of the forum.
Cacdac said discussions with India, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia addressed priorities for the mechanism over the next two years, with an emphasis on aligning the dialogue’s agenda with GCM objectives — particularly around safe labor mobility, migrant worker protections and return and reintegration systems.
The bilateral engagements, he said, are part of a broader strategy to deepen partnerships with both labor-sending and labor-receiving countries as Manila seeks to raise the floor on protections for the estimated 10 million Filipinos working abroad.
