Promoting
Decent Work for Sri Lankans
Female
migrant workers need special and urgent attention !
International
migration is a global phenomenon. Many men and women migrate
in search of employment to countries where they will be better
paid than in their home country. It is estimated that female
migrants make up almost half of migrant workers in the world
today. Feminization of migration is characterized by subordination,
vulnerability, exploitation and abuse, and generally excluded
from the scope of legal protection, says the International
Labour Organization (ILO) in Colombo.
In Sri Lanka, 1.2 million of the labour force are registered
as migrant workers. Every year nearly 200,000 persons are
leaving Sri Lanka for foreign employment and the majority
of these are women. Figures from 2004 talk a clear language
with 62.53 % women migrating from Sri Lanka. Most of them
went abroad to work as housemaids. Migrant women contribute
significantly to the Sri Lankan economy. Statistics show that
migrant workers were able to send Rs.158,291 million to Sri
Lanka in 2004, out of which Sri Lanka workers in the Middle
Eastern countries remitted Rs. 87,871 million.
According to the Sri Lanka
Bureau of Foreign Employment statistics many migrant women
face serious human rights violations while abroad, such as
sexual harassment, violence at the workplace, arrest and detention,
non-payment of wages, wrongful dismissal, withholding of their
passport, fraud by the employer and agents, hazardous working
conditions (heavy weights, long hours), xenophobic violence,
trafficking and even death. The number of deaths reported
(men and women migrant workers) during the year 2004 was 245.
Many of these incidents go unrecorded due to the stigma attached
to the incident or fear of loosing the job in the host country.
The migration process can roughly
be divided into pre-departure, post-arrival and reintegration
and at each of these points there are opportunities to intervene
with information and preventive measures to avoid that a labour
migration process does not entail or end in labour exploitation.
“Women who migrate
in search of work need our special and urgent attention”,
says Tine Staermose, Director ai of the ILO in Colombo. They
have a right to expect decent working conditions including
being free from fear of violation of their basic human rights.
Social justice and decent work is for all workers, irrespective
of gender, class, caste, nationality, religion and this is
more important to day than ever.
Despite the fact that Sri Lanka
has signed the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights
of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families in 1996
little has been achieved to protect the increasing number
of migrant workers. The ILO migrant specific conventions C
97, 143 and 181 provide protection to all migrant workers
irrespective of the illegal status created through a clandestine
migration process. Yet many workers do not know of their rights
in the event of violation of their rights. ILO believes that
lack of information and little awareness of the rights among
migrant workers is one of the reasons for the vulnerability
of migrant workers. Most of the information material is written
in a language not familiar to them. It is therefore
crucial to make the information available in a language understandable
to the migrant workers for their better understanding of the
risks involved in labour migration, their rights and how to
protect themselves.
The International Labour Organization has adapted and translated
six modules on migration “Preventing Discrimination,
Exploitation and Abuse of Women Migrant Workers: An Information
Guide’’ This information guide is intended
to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the vulnerability
of women migrant workers towards discrimination, exploitation
and abuse throughout all stages of the international migration
process, including being trafficked. It aims to promote legislation,
policies and action to prevent such discrimination. The modules
have been adapted and translated into Sinhala and Tamil by
migration experts Ms. Malsiri Dias, Ms. Ramani Jayasundara
and Ms. Kanthi Yapa.
The modules will be released to commemorate the International
Women’s Day.
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