Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) is a feminist, membership-driven network. Our member represents 265 diverse women’s rights organisations and advocates from 30 countries and territories in Asia and the Pacific. APWLD is working closely with the members in advancing the human rights of women migrants and building the feminist grassroot movement. This submission is the compilation of evidence-based analysis and recommendations by APWLD’s members in providing the input to the Co-Facilitators of the Zero Draft of the IMRF Progress Declaration.
● The progress declaration should address the root causes and structural factors that compel women’s migration. The lack of decent work opportunities, poverty, violence, land and resource
grab, conflicts as well as climate crisis causes people to flee for safety and to secure a sustainable livelihood for themselves and their families. The urgency of the multiple existing crises
confronting the condition of women migrants and refugees should be highlighted in the Progress Declaration. In addition, concrete actions and measures to eliminate all adverse drivers and
structural factors that compel women to leave their country of origin should be placed at the significant step to advance the human rights of women migrants, refugees and internally
displaced persons.
● The Progress Declaration failed to address the issues of sexual and gender-based violence in migration. Sexual and gender-based violence follows women through their migrations, as a driver
of the migration, a risk or reality during their journey and time as a migrant worker or refugee woman. COVID-19 related lockdown and restriction measures have triggered a shadow pandemic
of gender-based violence1. Migrant domestic workers, sex workers, women migrants have experienced multiple and intersecting forms of violence and abuse. States should develop and
implement gender-responsive and trauma-informed policies to prevent and respond to violence against migrant women, including domestic violence and intimate partner violence, sexual and
gender-based violence, harmful practices, violence in the workplace, racial, ethnic and religious violence, xenophobic violence and other forms of violence.
● The Progress Declaration has highlighted that many member states and private sectors had made progress in promoting fair and ethical recruitment and decent work for migrant workers.
However, the reality experienced by the women migrants in Asia and the Pacific shows otherwise. Women migrants are particularly vulnerable to Illegal recruitment practices, including exorbitant recruitment fees, document confiscation, coercion of signing documents and taking loans, leaving women migrants trapped in cycles of debt bondage and at greater risk of forced labour, and human trafficking. Migrant domestic workers are forced to pay higher recruitment fees to cover all the expenses induced by COVID-19 pandemic2; while recruitment agencies and brokers use the pandemic crisis to maximise their profits by imposing extra fees on workers. Accessible and effective redress/justice mechanisms are most needed to hold responsible actors to account for and ensure affected migrant workers and their families’ access to justice and remedies.
● We stress the urgent need to take concrete actions and commit to promoting long-term regular pathways with a right-based approach. Gendered barriers such as travel bans and policy restriction on women’s migration, mandatory pregnancy and health tests in the name of protection should be abolished immediately. The discriminative restriction does not prevent and
instead increases irregular migration3 – Women migrants are forced to take indirect and dangerous routes through irregular channels to foreign employment. In order to eliminate the
vulnerability associated with undocumented status and human trafficking, it is necessary to increase the availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration that uphold the principles
of equality and non-discrimination and promote and protect women’s human rights and fundamental freedoms.
● The Progress Declaration has stressed the importance of meaningful participation of women in the formulation of migration policies to ensure migration policies are gender-responsive and
human rights-based. However, we also reiterate that the participation of women migrants in the decision making process can only be achieved while the right to freedom of association for
migrants and refugees is ensured. The ongoing crackdown on civil society and human rights defenders has resulted in the targeting of migrant workers, union activists and NGO workers who
speak out about abuses or defend rights of migrants, has stopped them from effectively exercising their fundamental rights and influencing the policies that shape their lives.
● APWLD calls for a meaningful, inclusive and transparent IMRF and all GCM processes. Women, migrants, refugees in all their diversity must be a key part of the review and implementation of the GCM at all stages. Gaps hindering the meaningful participation of migrants and civil societies should be eliminated. This includes the active measure in bridging the digital divide, overcoming language barriers, and meeting the challenges of geography and time differences.
● APWLD also calls for the member states to ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and have it aligned with the implementation of the GCM and other relevant development policies and processes, such as Agenda 2030, the FfD process.
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