Travelling Film Festival on Migration and Human Rights - The first
ever travelling film festival dedicated to migration and human
rights will hit the road on 4th December in Kazakhstan.

Entitled, “Rights in the Spotlight”, the festival
will travel to Kyrgyzstan later in the month before reaching
Tajikistan in January 2007.

Showing films and documentaries which portray the realities of
migration in Central Asia and in other regions of the world
including Europe and America, the festival will screen in schools
and universities accompanied by written material. All the films
selected for Rights in the Spotlight reveal the human dimension of
migration and portray characters the audience can identify
with.

Thematic sessions will also be organized and will provide a
unique opportunity for discussions on topics such as human
trafficking, labour migration and human smuggling and other issues
dealing with migrant and human rights at local level within the
three countries.

Funded by the Danish Foreign Ministry, the travelling film
festival is part of a programme carried out by the Central Asia
Partnership Group (CAPG). Created in 2003 and composed of IOM, the
Danish Institute for Human Rights and the Danish Refugee Council,
the CAPG aims to promote the peaceful and democratic development of
the Central Asian states and for the inclusion of migrant rights
issues by fora at local, state and regional levels.

An IOM report last year highlighting the changing migration
trends from and within Central Asia within the last decade, not
only found that Central Asia was a major source of both irregular
and regular migration to the Russian Federation in particular, but
that violations of the human rights of migrants had also become a
significant issue. Violations include employers not providing
written contracts, making migrants work long hours on very low pay
or even refusing to pay, the lack of safety standards in the
workplace and lack of access to social and welfare structures such
as schools and hospitals for migrants and their families.

An estimated 1.7 million migrants are now in Russia from Central
Asia, while Kazakhstan has about 300,000 labour migrants from
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

For more information, please contact:

Ms. Elodie Fischer

IOM TCC

Tel: +43 1 585 33 22 12

E-mail: "mailto:efischer@iom.int" target="" title=
"">efischer@iom.int 

Mr. Nurzhan Yerzhanov

IOM Almaty

Tel: +7 3272 91 42 63

E-mail: "mailto:nyerzhanov@iom.nursat.kz" target="" title=
"">nyerzhanov@iom.nursat.kz



Mr. Bolot Isakov

IOM Bishkek

Tel: +996 312 627 936

E-mail: "mailto:bolot@iom.elcat.kg" target="" title=
"">bolot@iom.elcat.kg

Mr. Ozar Saidov

IOM Dushanbe

Tel. +99 23 72 21 03 02

E-mail: "mailto:osaidov@iom.tajnet.com" target="" title=
"">osaidov@iom.tajnet.com