“Workers Not Slave”: Human Rights Situation of Women Migrants
Consultation with the UN Mandate Holders by APWLD, its Members and Partners
Introduction
A growing number of women are moving within countries and across borders to seek employment opportunities, or/and escape from violence, discrimination, climate crisis, conflict and poverty. Increased feminisation of migration has become an overt trend in the globalised world. At the same time, women migrants face unprecedented challenges with the deregulation of labour policies and gender-specific restrictions in migration policies. Governments, recruitment agencies and employers (both corporations and private employers) depend on a flexible, mobile and cheap labour force to meet the labour demands under exploitative labour contracts and weak or no labour protections. At the same time, migration policies increasingly pose barriers to mobility that criminalise migrants and make them more vulnerable to human rights violations in destination countries. With these circumstances, women migrants struggle with multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and inequalities, restrictions in movement, labour rights violations, sexual and gender-based violence, racism and xenophobia.
In the face of different forms of human rights violations, APWLD and migrant groups in the region are building and strengthening the movement of women migrants who are able to claim their rights to decent work, living wage, freedom of movement and right to organise. In this context, APWLD convened a virtual consultation on 10 November 2021 for its members and partners with the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants, Mr. Felipe Morales Gonzales, Vice Chair of UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls, Ms. Dorothy Estrada, and Member of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), Dr. Heisoo Shin with an aim to share the stories, challenges and recommendations of women migrants and their communities.
Multiple and Intersecting Human Rights Violations Experienced by women migrants
“28 year old Mamata Mukhiya from the Eastern Nepal, was married and had three children. She opted for foreign labour migration without her husband’s approval to escape her drunkard and abusive husband and also to give her children a good education and future. She took help from a local broker via India and Dubai as transit. As a domestic worker in the host country, Mamta had to work up to 17 hours a day without rest and adequate food. She was never paid on time. Her mobility was restricted and she was even abused verbally and physically by the employer.”
Mamata’s experience is not an exception and is dismally shared by thousands of women migrants. During the consultation, APWLD members and partners shared that structural issues, such as poverty, gender-based violence and lack of decent employment and livelihood opportunities in home countries often force women to seek opportunities for a better life outside their countries. Yet in host countries, they experience other forms of human rights violations, including lack of access to decent work, adequate healthcare services, access to safe and decent accommodation, and access to justice and legal services. Migrant domestic workers and their families end up in debt bondage due to the extortionate recruitment cost of migration that is converted to a loan agreement with a high interest rate, which further exacerbates their existing vulnerabilities. Migrant domestic workers who fail to repay their loans are intimidated and threatened by recruitment agencies as well as loan companies.
During their employment in destination countries, women migrant workers experience violence and exploitation in multiple forms. Despite being abused or working in slavery-like conditions, most of women migrant workers were unable to leave the employment due to the debt bondage caused by the illegal recruitment fee.
Most laws, policies or regulations, including those supposed to protect women migrants, are discriminatory based on gender. For instance, minimum wage law, labour law, social security and basic services are not applicable to women migrant workers and domestic workers in many of the countries because of their intersecting identities as migrants, women and informal sector workers in Asia and the Pacific. Women migrants are also not able to access public healthcare services due to similar restrictive laws and policies.
Towards a Safe and Human Rights-based Approach to Migration:
APWLD members and partners shared that in order to ensure that the human rights of migrants are protected, duty-bearers in both host and destination countries should address the root causes of migration, ensure a rights-based recruitment process for migrant workers, ensure safe and orderly migration process, ensure access to decent work and living wage, provide protection to women migrants from sexual and gender-based violence, ensure access to universal health coverage, end discriminatory policies and processes for women migrants, and ensure that women migrants have adequate access to justice and legal remedies.
Participants and the mandate holders also highlighted the importance of having an organised, intersectional movement to identify what systems drive injustice and human rights violations, and to collectively lobby with and hold the duty-bearers accountable to promote, protect and fulfil human rights of women migrants. Participants emphasised the need to ground legal and policy recommendations on women migrants’s realities to ensure their needs and issues are addressed fully and effectively.
APWLD and its members and partners presented a regional message to UN mandate holders to provide an overview of the human rights situation of women migrants in Asia and the Pacific region and to share legal, policy and programmatic recommendations for member states.
