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China pledges to better protect migrants' rights

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-04-01 14:34

UNITED NATIONS -- A top Chinese family planning official said here Tuesday that the Chinese government pledged to better protect the legitimate rights of migrants by promulgating and implementing regulations on reproductive health.

"China is undergoing the largest population migration in human history. In the coming 20 to 30 years, population migration in China will speed up even further, with some 300 million migrants from rural areas to cities," said Li Bin, China's minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

When addressing a UN meeting on population and development which opened here Monday, she said provinces or cities with concentration of migrants have set up effective forms of regional cooperation and provided free-of-charge family planning services, including gynecological checkups and free condoms.

Li said China is in the process of promulgation of regulation on reproductive and family planning of migrants to protect their legitimate rights.

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The minister said the Chinese government will make efforts to implement programs for functional zones of population and development, research and develop policies and measures for the orderly transfer of population and balanced urban-rural development.

The government will also accelerate the development of a new mechanism to manage the migrants and provide quality services to migrants, the minister said.

Latest statistics from China's National Statistics Bureau show that China has 225 million rural migrant workers as of 2008.

The week-long annually session of the Commission of Population and Development, focused this year on the contribution of the Program of Action of International Conference on Population and Development, a consensus reached in Cairo conference in 1994, to the internationally agreed development goals.