Governments and NGOs vow to protect migrant workers
Kanis Dursin, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Upset by the rampant abuse against migrant workers, particularly female laborers, governments and non-governmental organizations from Asian and Middle East countries vowed on Thursday to join hands in campaigns aimed at protecting the migrant workers.
"We agree to promote multistakeholder collaboration within and between countries of origin and destination, including bilateral and multilateral agreements to protect migrant workers," they said in a statement issued at the end of a three-day regional conference here.
The conference, called Protecting Women Migrant Workers in Asia: Meeting the Challenges, was organized by the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) to enhance commitment to protect the rights of women migrant workers.
Government officials and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attending the conference came from the Philippines, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Jordan and Indonesia.
According to the latest data issued by the International Labor Organization (ILO), over 20 million Asians were working outside of their own countries, mostly in Middle East countries, generating some US$80 billion in remittance in 2002, up from $60 billion in 1998.
Despite their growing roles in the economies of both sending and receiving countries, migrant workers, especially females, are often subjected to abuse and discrimination in both their countries of origin and employment.
According to Jen D'Cunha, UNIFEM's Regional Program Manager, female migrant workers were prone to various kinds of abuse and discrimination including extortion, sexual harassment and domestic violence as well as racial discrimination.
Conference participants also agreed to gear their efforts toward ensuring a balance between recognizing and protecting migrant workers to prevent rights violations and providing mechanisms and services for redress and recovery from abuse.
"We agree to place migration on national and regional as well as international agendas," they said.
They acknowledged, however, that migrant worker issues were a multi-stakeholder concern that require equally multilateral responses involving sending and receiving countries, international organizations and NGOs.
They called on countries sending and receiving migrant workers to ratify international human rights pacts and forge and implement multilateral cooperation on minimum work standards and welfare services, as well as the exchange of information on undocumented migrant workers.
"We need to convene inter-ministerial meetings between countries of origin and employment on the provision of protections to migrant workers, including women," they said.
According to the participants, while some countries have put in place legislation favorable to migrant workers, others are still struggling to draft regulations on rights protection.
"We encourage countries of employment to share and adopt good practices in the protection and empowerment of women migrant workers," they said.
Non-governmental organizations attending the conference, meanwhile, pledged to undertake targeted capacity building on gender and rights in migration for various stakeholders, including policymakers, service providers, recruiting agencies, employees and migrant workers themselves and to monitor the implementation of human rights standards on migrant women workers and document rights violations.