Former Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam has been elected by acclamation as Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (CMW), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism said.
The election took place at the opening segment of the Committee’s 42nd session at the Palais Wilson in Geneva on May 28. Kariyawasam will serve a two-year term and was previously elected to the Committee in June 2023. He served as the inaugural Chair of the CMW when it was first established in 2004 and has now served on the body for four terms.
In remarks after the election, Kariyawasam thanked the Committee for the unopposed choice and stressed the importance of “adopting a strategic approach” to its future work, citing evolving challenges in the human rights landscape and tightening resource constraints at the UN’s treaty-body system.
The CMW is a body of 14 independent experts that monitors how states implement the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, a core international human rights treaty. The chairmanship lands at a substantive moment for Sri Lanka, which depends heavily on Gulf and Middle East remittance corridors and has expanded social-protection schemes for migrant families this year, including an SLBFE Rs.10,000 monthly daycare allowance for migrant workers’ children.
Kariyawasam is a retired career diplomat with more than three decades of service in Sri Lanka and abroad, and is widely recognised as a subject-matter expert on migration governance.
Source: Ada Derana.
