Seminar Summary
February 13-15, 2003
Bangkok, Thailand
Day 1, Feb. 13
Setting the tone for the three-day seminar, IPS Asia-Pacific Regional Director Johanna Son introduced the media project on migration as an Inter Press Service initiative to promote and develop specialised coverage on the links between migration, reproductive health and gender, thus giving labour migration a human face.
She called it a journey which began in 2000 with the project, 'On the Philippine Migration Trail', which followed the migration paths of millions of Filipino workers dispersed around the world. The second phase of this journey - 'On the Asian Migration Trail' now covers the Asian region, home to most of the world's population and a bulk of human movements as well.
Many problems faced by migrant workers, Son said, are widely known poor working conditions, debts, dangerous jobs, unsafe environments, sexual harassment. "But there's more to the migrant that we do not always read about."
Newspapers tend to treat stories about migrant workers as a police or consular matter, or worse, they sensationalise the stories and highlight only the bad side. "So you don't see the face of the migrant in stories like these, or they become numbers," Son said.
Labour-receiving countries, she points out, look at migrant workers as tools, and blame them for everything from crime to illnesses. At home, meanwhile, they are regarded as cash cows because society has associated working abroad with having a good life.
Migration is not just about the time when workers are overseas, but the phenomenon should be traced from the time they decide to move, and what happens to them and their families after that, Son added.
"All of these make a fertile area to develop stories around, go beyond the sob story stereotypes and put in context what is in many ways the "obvious" aspects of stories about the working conditions, and zoom in on the human being inside the migrant worker."
It is in this context that IPS has embarked on this media project: to focus on under-reported issues like the human side of migration. Son explained the mechanics of the programme, explaining that the writers in the project would proceed to work on their feature stories after the seminar.
Likewise, she said, "We hope to use the seminar as a way to take a critical look into our own roles as media. Maybe look at what picture of migrants media show. Are they normally associated with crime, with congestion? Depicted as loose women? What kind of words and language are used to describe them?"
There is also the aspect of rights, and that a person's right should not end at this own national border, Son said.
* * *
Ford Foundation Philippines Programme Officer Caridad Tharan spoke about the priority areas which the U.S. organisation supports through grants, migration being one of them.
Since the 1950s, she said, Ford has supported programmes in response to worldwide migration flows. A shift in its approach took place in the early 1980s when it began to take a long-term view of the problem of refugees and migration rather than merely responding to a crisis.
This led to a focus on strengthening capacities of institutions to enable them to cope with population flows over the long-term, Tharan said, adding that one assumption that shaped their policy on migrants is that "migration can and should be a positive force for economic growth, human rights, cultural enrichment in host societies".
Tharan likewise gave an overview of the migration flows from Asia. Citing figures culled by the Manila- based Migrant Forum for Asia, she said as of 2000, there were 130 million people on the move migrants and refugees.
At that time, there were at least 19 million Asian migrant workers in Asia, and over 25 million Asian migrants working all over the world as of 2000, most of them in the Middle East. The statistics also showed that at least 50 percent of Asian migrant workers are women and a high proportion are in domestic work, services and entertainment. Many were in irregular situations and victims of trafficking.
Tharan cautioned against the use of the term 'illegal' to describe undocumented workers, adding that while the workers may be in an illegal situation, they should not be referred to as illegal. "No person is illegal."
(Other speakers and participants later used the term 'irregular' migrants as well, usage that IPS believes is useful to stress not only among the fellows in this programme, but for its own news agency material as well. Note: The IPS gender glossary lists 'domestic worker' instead of 'maid' in journalistic copy.)
| Tharan: 'No person is illegal.' |
Labour shortage and economic restructuring are the "pull" factors that prompt the more affluent countries to import labour, while high unemployment, low wages, poverty are among the "push" factors that drive workers to seek employment overseas.
"In the Philippines," Tharan explained, "migration was intended as a temporary measure to alleviate unemployment but after three decades, it is still a major policy so it is no longer temporary."
She said it was necessary to address the root cause of migration, which in many cases, is really poverty.
* * *
D.P.A. Naidu from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Bangkok said migrant workers have rights and freedoms as provided for by international labour conventions and recommendations. Among these rights are protection against possible forms of exploitation, equality of treatment in respect to working conditions, as well as equality with the nationals of the host country in terms of minimum wage rates, hours of work, welfare facilities and other benefits.
But having said this, Naidu acknowledged that violations of these labour laws occur as enforcement is weak and that ILO's hands are tied, meaning the agency can only intervene whenever a complaint is filed against an employer.
Naidu cites ILO Convention 97, adopted in 1946, as the core convention for migrant workers. But he said only three countries in Asia have ratified the Convention: New Zealand, Sabah (before it became part of Malaysia) and Hong Kong (while it was still under British rule).
It is in this context that he thinks the (1990) UN Convention for the Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families - expected to come into force later this year after it received its 20th ratification courtesy of East Timor will be no different from previous Conventions concerning migrant workers.
"I don't see any difference between the Convention adopted in 1990 (and Convention 97).
Apart from the 20, those who are party to it, will they follow this Convention? We have the same problem in ILO. We cannot force countries that have not ratified Convention 97 (to follow)."
The ILO, he said, is having problems even among those who have ratified the Convention. "We have a problem enforcing the Convention into law and practice. So the most important thing here is the will on the part of the governments to ensure that at least certain parts of the Convention are put into law and practice."
Years ago, he said, the ILO arranged a meeting among labour sending and receiving countries to discuss issues affecting migrant workers. "Unfortunately, there was no compromise, no understanding because sending countries compete among themselves while receiving countries like to have the advantage of getting workers whom they like."
Thus the need for regional collaboration, rather than competition, among sending countries, he pointed out.
* * *
Migration is marked by feminisation and gross human rights violations, stated Jean D' Cunha, of UNIFEM's East and South East Asia Regional Office.
"Women are moving as single, independent temporary economic migrants largely as a family survival strategy into informal manufacturing sectors where they suffer gross human rights violations," she said in her presentation, 'Engendering Migration'.
She said initiatives to address the issue of migration are gender-blind and generally lack a rights-based sustainable development orientation. "They are embedded in morality, law and order, national sovereignty paradigm that is marked by gender and racial biases."
| D'Cunha: 'It is important to empower women migrant workers.' |
A migration policy that is gender-sensitive, D'Cunha pointed out, is one that introduces policies, legislation, programmes that ensure equality between men and women, going beyond the provision of equal opportunities to transform institutional norms, rules and mindsets in order to ensure equality of access and equality of results.
She said UNIFEM has an ongoing a programme on empowering women migrants in Asia, with domestic workers as the focus group. Countries covered include Nepal, Indonesia, and the Philippines as source sites and Jordan as a destination country.
In Nepal, which now bans the migration of women to the Gulf, UNIFEM managed to persuade the government to lift the ban on women migrants to the Gulf, but only to work in the formal sector, not as domestic workers.
In Jordan, which D' Cunha described as relatively liberal, they are developing work contracts for foreign domestic workers which recognise the workers' rights to medical care, timely payment of wages and the like.
There was some discussion on how to manage migration after Professor Ashish Bose of India's Jawarhalal Nehru University criticised UNIFEM's initiative in Nepal. "Why is UNIFEM using its resources to help Nepali women migrate for domestic work in Jordan. Why not use the money for livelihood projects in the country?" Bose asked.
D' Cunha explained that one cannot stop people from migrating so the next best thing was to provide safe conditions for migration and to enhance skills of women. "You cannot provide hundreds of jobs (in Nepal) so in the short-term there will be domestic workers," she emphasised.
This discussion the effectivity of bans on the export of women to be domestic workers and take unskilled jobs - was an issue that came up again in the other sessions of the seminar.
* * *
Deep Ranjani Rai from the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women started her talk by saying that there was an alarming trend among organisations to conflate trafficking with prostitution and trafficking with migration. This is not so, she said, but added that trafficking begins as a decision to migrate, and when the migrant asks for help from say, a smuggler, this person puts himself or herself in a situation of vulnerability.
She said inadequate laws to prevent trafficking and protect victims, corruption, the opening of borders, the demand for cheap labour or commercial sex are among the factors that increase the potential for trafficking.
"These groups operate with impunity," Rai stated. "The very few cases where traffickers have been actually prosecuted, there has not been enough impact to send the message out to say trafficking is a crime and should be dealt with severely."
Prostitution, she said, is the most visible form of trafficking, so people tend to think that people who are trafficked all end up in prostitution. "But there are other work sites that are more exploitative, more abusive, more violent than prostitution," she pointed out. These are domestic work, factory work and construction jobs.
Then there is the other outcome of trafficking: marriage as in the case of Vietnamese women who end up as wives of Chinese men. There are instances where the women know what they are getting into, in which case they are not trafficked women. But those who do not know and are forced into marriage are victims of trafficking, she said.
Rai noted that some countries regard migrant workers as a problem rather than a resource, and worse, some governments, because of insensitive and inconsistent policies, are further pushing the already vulnerable migrant population underground to force them to make a choice of taking the illegal ways of coming into a country.
The legal channel of migration, is however, not all that safe and good either. She cites the case of an employment agency in one country which violates the workers' human rights, where placement fees are so excessive "they have to sell off most of everything they have to be able to get into this". And afterwards, the workers are exploited and possibly sexually abused before they even leave for overseas work.
"I call this state-sponsored because the employment agency is accredited by the government," Rai pointed out.
Digressing from the topic of trafficking, she said one aspect of migration that is often glossed over is the workers' wellbeing their emotional and mental health. Often, she says, the migrants' isolation, loneliness, their inability to cope with the new environment, their work experience and possibly abuse leave them drained.
She called the experience "soul-destroying". "Because I think somewhere down the line in all these Conventions and laws, the human-ness of the person has been lost."
Another issue which needs to be given prominence in discussing migration, she said, is the role the family plays "in either empowering or exploiting migrant workers". She added, "The family is not quite the safe haven that everybody says it is."
Once a person leaves for overseas work, she says, the worker has no respite as "the family wants money constantly", so he or she is forced to stay there until debts are paid, and family members' wants are satisfied.
* * *
Moving the discussion on trafficking to more concrete terms, David Feingold, an anthropologist, filmmaker and advisor on culture with UNESCO in Bangkok, said there are widespread myths about trafficking especially in the Upper Mekong Region. Many of these myths, he said, are perpetrated through media by people who know little of the issue.
Misinformed people say that the problem of trafficking is a problem of culture, but that is not correct, he said. "That's not to say that there is not sometimes a cultural element in trafficking, but often that is not what is going on."
He said the trade of women in Upper Mekong region out of southern China, out of Burma, out of Laos into Thailand, and out of Burma into Yunnan, out of Laos into Yunnan across those borders is very different from the trade that brings girls from Thailand to Japan's entertainment industry, for example.
Citing the situation of minority Shan women coming out of Burma, he said: "These women see their choice in very, very stark terms. They see their choice as staying home and being raped by the Burmese army, or coming down to Thailand, taking often any job which could be sex-related or not, to support their families."
"So they end up making a rational choice, but it is not a choice that anyone should ever have to make," said Feingold.
Burmese workers who come across the border to Thailand are fleeing forced labour, excessive taxation, sex slavery, he pointed out. While it is true that the military regime has allowed the International Labour Organisation into the country, he argued that for the minority Shan people or Karen people, this has made no difference.
"International laws or conventions can be important, they are a way to pressure governments to act," he said. But they will not fully address the problem of people in villages who labour not only under the weight of poverty, or gender or sexual discrimination, but under the weight of discrimination because they are minorities, he added.
Feingold shared his observation of the relationship between sex work and contracting HIV/AIDS. 'I would have thought that the longer you are in sex worker, the greater the chance of your being infected with HIV. In fact that is not the case. In fact the greatest chance of one getting infected with HIV is during the first six months of sex work."
The inability to speak languages, and negotiate condom use places people at the greatest vulnerability, he said.
He also took issue with the abuse of the use of statistics in media reports the measure of seriousness of a problem is not in the numbers.
"What do we do to connect the very real problems people isolate with the kind of gloss that we see in the press? And it's the gloss that we see in the press that often determines policy."
"If the actualities of policy implementation are not based on the real on-the-ground situation, it is going to be disastrous, and particularly disastrous for minorities," Feingold asserted.
After his talk, he introduced a film he wrote and directed Trading Women, which investigates the trade in minority girls and women from Burma, Laos and China into the Thai sex industry.
The film also examines the efforts of the U.S. government to fight trafficking through a punitive regime that will sanction any country that does not meet U.S. standards an approach that some feel may be counter-productive.
