Crossing Borders, Claiming Rights: Using Human Rights Law to Empower Women Migrant Workers

Abstract

This Article considers the impact of the Migrant Workers Convention on the human rights of women migrants. While the adoption of a convention targeting abuses against migrant workers is a significant development in international human rights law, the author cautions that its specialized nature might be perceived as a limitation on the obligations that states owe to women migrants. The author warns against traditional, singlevariable, compartmentalization of human rights treaties that would make the Migrant Workers Convention the only applicable human rights tool to women migrants, and, instead, advocates an intersectional approach. Using intersectionality, the author shows that many of the major human rights treaties can be invoked on behalf of the empowerment of migrant workers. While advocates and scholars should welcome the Migrant Workers' Convention as an interpretive tool and as a potential site for the development of best practices, they should also refocus their attention on the entire range of human rights treaties, and consider the ways in which the rights of women migrants are already included in the panoply of standards set out in those instruments.