Search results

The paper proposes the classification of health security as one of the non-military security dimensions of the second generation, determined more by globalization processes than by the end of the Cold War (first generation). The cognitive goal of the article is to identify and analyse the elements of the structure of international health security such as 1) the essence and specificity of securitization of threats to health security; 2) health security threats; 3) the referent object or whom it concerns; and 4) measures to ensure it. Specific to this dimension is the political motivation for its securitization. In the world of interrelated and global mobilities, what is significant for health security is the diversity of the development level, preferred values, and, consequently, the diversity of sensitivity and susceptibility of national healthcare systems to cross-border threats.

Adjusting the legal status, and support policies for migrant workers is an issue on the agenda of international institutions for nearly a hundred years. The first efforts to protect foreign workers have been taken during the first session of the International Labour Conference in 1919. In the following decades ILO activities has led to the preparation of three international documents concerning this issue (non-binding ILO Convention No. 66 in 1939, and Convention No. 97 of 1949, and No. 143 of 1975). For many decades, the problem of the protection and assistance of migrant workers' rights was considered as a narrow issue of international labor law. Codification efforts, undertaken during seventies, has led to the adaptation of the UN document (International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families) in 1990, and inclusion this issue into more general area of international human rights law. Despite this fact, and the existence of several categories of documents concerning migrant workers within Council of Europe, the European Union, and even ASEAN, the protection of migrant workers has never been effectively functioning system. The aim of this article is the analysis of the codification of that issue, and the main obstacles to consensus on the protection of migrant workers' rights. The state parties of the UN Convention contains primarily countries of origin of migrants (such as Mexico, Morocco and the Philippines). It seems, therefore, that despite 46 ratifications the, UN convention does not have a global character, and activities of its monitoring body (Committee on Migrant Workers-CMW) reflects primarily demands of sending countries. The article closely examines particularly controversial provisions of the ILO and UN documents from the point of view of current labour migrations and policies of sending and host countries.