Seeking new cooperation for women migrants

Seeking new cooperation for women migrants

More than half of some 20 million Asian migrant workers are
women. The Jakarta Post's Kanis Dursin interviewed Jean D' Cunha,
Regional Program Manager/Technical Advisor of the United Nations
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), during a regional conference
on women's migrant worker protection in Jakarta recently. The
following are the highlights of that interview:

Question: What are the common problems faced by Asia's women
migrant workers?

Answer: At the recruitment stage, women always have less
assets to migrate. So, they have to borrow, resulting in debt
bondage. They also have less access to information on migration
realities and procedures. In training centers, women are
confined, locked up, and abused sexually and physically. At the
country of employment, there is a kind of racist, prejudicial
attitude against women migrant workers. Women are seen as
sexually available and morally depraved. On return, in some
countries they stigmatize women returnees because they feel as if
they have "gone out", that means they have been morally tainted
in some way or another.
Some of the problems arise because of the absence of bilateral
agreements between countries of origin and employment. What
should be done?

One important strategy could be to draw on those receiving
countries that have a range of good practices such as Jordan,
Hong Kong and the like to share these good practices in seminars
and international media so that these can be replicated in other
receiving countries. Then sustained dialog and pressure has to be
put by the international community and sending countries on
destination countries to improve their rights record.

Q. Do you think banning migration of female workers would be an
option?
A: Restrictions or bans by certain countries have been placed to
protect migrant workers from trafficking and other rights
violations. But what the evidence is showing is that it is
increasing the vulnerability to trafficking because women who
need to migrate for survival will use dangerous options and
avenues to move anyway. Secondly, it is definitely a
discriminatory measure. It indicates disproportionate
discrimination against women. Thirdly, it construes women as
dependent, as weak and it violates the rights to mobility. And
fourthly, it doesn't build women's capacity to deal with
potential exploitation to pre-departure trainings and seminars
and the like. In all senses, it is disempowering for women.

Q. What is then the best solution?
A: We need to provide them with protective provisions such as
access to information on migration realities, the costs and
benefits of migration. We need to provide them with information
and access to economic resources so that they need not migrate.
If they are migrating anyway, we need to have pre-departure
orientation training for them with the whole focus on protection
and how they can best protect themselves and how they can avail
of and invoke entitlements and rights as well as knowledge of the
culture of the countries. We need to link them up with NGOs and
diplomatic missions in the host countries so they can have access
to assistance.

Q. Migrant worker issues are no longer a bilateral problem but a
regional issue that requires multilateral responses. What sort of
multilateral responses do you think would be appropriate?
A: Countries of origin would have greater power if they bonded
together and came out with some common minimum standards of
treatment for migrant workers, contracts, welfare provisions for
migrant workers rather than negotiating individually and
independently because they will be beaten down and they should
have some kind of cooperation and not beat down one another for
the market share. We need to promote and sustain dialog between
countries of origin and countries of destination to protect
migrant workers.

Q. How do you assess the responses of governments to the rights
of women migrant workers?
A: It's a very mixed and varied picture. Very slowly, migration
is emerging as a concern on the development agenda and you have
governments of countries of origin which have come out with
extremely supportive policies and programs. There is always a gap
between the policy and the implementation of the policy. But at
least there is political willingness to introduce these policies.
In countries of destination also, we do have examples of
countries which are slowly introducing protections for migrant
workers but I would say that it's an emerging issue. We have a
very long way to go in terms of protective policies both in
sending and in destination countries.

Q. How can the problem of undocumented migrant workers be solved?
A: We need to really lift restrictions and bans on migration and
immigration policies need to be liberalized because if they are
not liberalized that creates a lucrative ground for traffickers
and irregular migration. Also we need to have regulations for
recruiting agencies. We need to place bans on government
officials as well as people implementing the law from running,
recruiting businesses. We need to have regulations for recruiting
agencies which are marked by both incentives and disincentives
because they need to be drawn within the purview of law and they
need incentives to provide good rights provisions, welfare
provisions for workers. And lastly, we need to mandatorily
register outgoing workers and provide them with incentives so
that they will register as it has been done in Sri Lanka.

Q. What are the new trends of migration?
A: The new trend is the feminization of migration which means
that there is an increasing number of women migrating for work.
The number of women migrating for work is really outstripping men
in certain countries like Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Philippines.
Secondly, women are migrating independently. Thirdly, they are
concentrated in the formal and informal sector, in women's
specific skilled and unskilled jobs. The highest concentration is
in domestic work and prostitution wherein they are really abused.
Fourth, they are really using facilitative channels of migration
either informal or formal channel because they lack access to
information and to migration know-how and procedures. Fifth, they
really contribute substantively to development both in countries
of employment and countries of origin. Sixth, trade and capital
flows are liberalized but labor migration flows are restricted
through restrictive immigration policies which ban women from
migrating and this is resulting in vulnerability to trafficking.
Finally, we are seeing an increase in irregular migration and
trafficking.

Q. How do you evaluate Indonesia's response to problems faced by
migrant workers?
A: I believe that no country in the world has a perfect rights
record on migrant workers, whether it's a destination country or
whether it's a sending country, whether it's a developing country
or whether it's a developed country. We are very happy that the
Indonesian government is showing a political willingness to
address the concerns of migrant workers and this is being
reflected in the bill.