The Migration (MUAH) programme of Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) proudly launched its Migration FPAR for the year 2022-2024 and will be working closely with 7 partner organisations throughout one and half year. The programme will continue to support grassroots women migrant groups to strengthen their collective power to challenge the systemic inequalities and rights violations in migration.
To advance the rights of women migrants in decent work and rights to organise, we believe that women migrants need to author their own stories and collect evidence of migrants’ rights violations. APWLD will equip the organisations with the tools to strengthen their capacity to document the evidence, build bargaining power, strategise the campaign and advocacy work, and movement architecture to demand the structural changes.
Below are the profile of seven organisations that have been selected as partners:
DemOlolt NGO, Mongolia is a non-governmental and non-profit women’s rights organization of Mongolia, which has been empowering women and girls including poor, indigenous, and rural, trans, intersex people as individuals and as a community since 2006. In relation to the FPAR, they will investigate and document the situation and the challenges faced by women migrants in the face of political, economic, and health crises. We will document decision-making processes on migrant women’s rights at local, national, regional, and international levels so that women challenge violations of their rights and gender imbalance in wage, working conditions, environment, and business initiatives in the patriarchal system and governance. Their FPAR will focus on working with women migrants in the capital Ulaanbaatar city and five major provinces where the mining industry booms with migrants.
Migrante International, Philippines founded in December 1996. They are a grassroots global alliance of overseas Filipino migrants and families organizing, educating, and mobilising to defend our rights and welfare. Their FPAR objective will focus on the Right to organise and freedom of association, particularly for Filipino migrant domestic workers who are most vulnerable to exploitation and human rights violations and left unrecognised by laws and policies that protect their rights, as women and as temporary migrant workers. Migrante International will work closely with its chapters in the Philippines, Asia region, and national grassroots organisation of former Filipino migrant domestic workers who worked in the Middle East, including their emerging local chapters in the Philippines.
National Indigenous Women Forum (NIWF), Nepal was established in 1998 to work with indigenous women and girls across Nepal to empower and support them in securing indigenous women’s rights. Their work addresses the root causes of vulnerability and exclusion of indigenous women and girls. During FPAR, they will investigate the impact of women’s migration on sexuality and agency by analysing the experiences of women workers from Kavrepalanchowk district, Nepal. Their FPAR will be conducted in compliance with all human rights and ethical standards to analyse the current trends and patterns of migration of Indigenous women migrants inside and outside the country.
Women’s Regional Network (WRN), India has been working with people on the move including migrants and internally displaced populations in India for 11 years. They seek to work on the “Right to organise and freedom of association” to study and analyse the ways in which legislation and policies in India have impacted women migrants’ rights to collectivise and demand their rights. Their FPAR also aims to investigate the impact of these restrictions on collectivising on their existing vulnerabilities, access to work, a decent wage, and bargaining power in the workplace. WRN believes in the power of networking and forming collectives in bringing structural changes. Researching the challenges and problems faced by migrant women’s collectives in Indian cities will help design interventions to mitigate these issues and strengthen women’s leadership.
Women Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC), Nepal is a feminist movement-based organisation working for women’s rights and social justice that contributes to peace, social justice, and sustainable development. Their main FPAR objective is to assess and build the strategic leadership capacity of returnee migrant workers to effectively participate in identifying and responding to their socio-economic issues to improve their well-being. Through FPAR, the organisation will be able to identify the major concerns of the returnee women migrants in relation to their contribution and possible role in the policy reform/influence. At the same time, FPAR enhances the capacity of the migrant workers involved throughout the process of the research. It further strengthens in localization of the issue of migration involving women migrant workers in policy-level dialogue at the local level.
Solidaritas Perempuan Sebay Lampung (SPSL), Indonesia is one of the community branches of Solidaritas Perempuan (SP) located in Lampung Province, Sumatera Island, Indonesia, and has been working with the grassroots women migrant workers since 1990. Their FPAR will focus to see the gaps in the implementation of the Migrant Workers Law at a local level in the East Lampung district and gather evidence of the impacts on the injustice, rights violation, and violence experienced by women migrant workers in all migration cycle including their families, particularly during and post covid-19. For this FPAR, they will continue to work closely with the community of women migrants in the area to build their leadership capacity that leads to collective actions to fight the structural injustices.
Serve the People Association Taoyuan, Taiwan is a labor NGO in Taoyuan that provides services to both local and migrant workers including shelters for migrant workers from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. The organisation builds the strategy to investigate the violation faced by women migrant workers related to their labour rights including maternity leave rights, GBV at workplaces, and excessive recruitment fees or other illegal fees. They have been working in assisting women migrant workers who reported sexual harassment and sex violence as well as women migrant workers where access is limited to claim their maternity leave. Through FPAR, they will continue work to document the story of Filipino migrant workers in the electronic industry in Taiwan which aim to strengthen the advocacy strategy to address the issue.
