Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo said the adoption of the Manila Declaration containing a provision protecting migrant workers abroad will provide the government a platform “to follow up on these [Arab] countries.”

The Manila Declaration was adopted by some 118 members of the NAM at the conclusion on Thursday of the Special NAM Ministerial Meeting held at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).

The Philippines is the world’s third-largest source of migrant workers, next to China and India. Their remittances reaching $18 billion this year also continue to buoy the ailing local economy, which is marred with rampant corruption and lack of effective governance.

However, half of the overseas Filipino workers (OFW) are domestic helpers but they do not provide the biggest bulk of OFW remittances because they are mostly underpaid and suffer from various forms of physical and sexual abuses.

The NAM document stressed on “the positive contributions of migration and increased people-to-people contacts in increasing understanding and fostering tolerance and cooperation among cultures and religions.”

The provision also reiterated the “responsibility of the [NAM] governments to safeguard and protect the rights of all migrants against illegal acts, in particular, acts of incitement to ethnic, racial and religious discrimination, hostility or violence and crimes perpetrated with racist or xenophobic motivation by individuals or groups.”

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Policy Erlinda Basilio admitted that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families “is not universally signed and ratified.”

This, she said prompted the Philippines to push for the creation of a global platform at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to campaign for the ratification of the treaty.

The Philippines has more than 2 million migrant workers in the Middle East countries, half of them in Saudi Arabia.

The treaty on migrant workers was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1990. The Philippines ratified the treaty in 1995 following the death sentence by hanging on Filipino domestic helper Flor Contemplacion in Singapore.

Most of the countries in the Middle East and Europe which are host to migrant workers refuse to ratify the UN treaty as it allows for the equal social protection of undocumented workers.

Of the 192 UN member countries, the ratification of the UN treaty has not even reached 50 despite the global campaigns for the protection of the rights of migrant workers. Most of the countries that ratified the treaty are sending migrant workers like the Philippines and other developing countries in Asia and poorer states in Africa.

Meanwhile, the Manila Declaration highlighted the importance of continuing interfaith dialogue “to prevent cultural homogenization and domination or incitement to hatred and discrimination, combat defamation of religions and develop better ways of promoting tolerance, respect for and protection of the freedom of religion and belief.”

The declaration also provides for the respect of the NAM member countries on their “right to preserve one’s cultural identity, stressing the role which the [UN] General Assembly and the relevant UN organs can play in that respect in particular through furthering the much-needed dialogue on those important and sensitive issues.”

Written by Estrella Torres / Reporter
First published in Business Mirror Online Space, 19th March, 2010

The body of 20-year old Anget R. of Madagascar was found hanging from a rope at her employer’s bedroom door Nov. 11. A newspaper in Madagascar reported the deaths of two other Malagasy women in October. One, identified only as Mampionona, was said to have fallen from the balcony of her employer’s house. The other, identified as Vololona, died after reportedly jumping from the balcony.

Sunit Bholan of Nepal, who was 22, allegedly committed suicide Oct. 8. Ethiopian Kassaye Etsegenet, 23, died after reportedly jumping from the seventh floor of her employer’s house Oct. 15. She left behind a suicide note citing personal reasons.

On Oct. 21, 26-year-old Zeditu Kebede Matente of Ethiopia was found dead, hanging from an olive tree. Two days later 30-year old Saneet Mariam also of Ethiopia died after allegedly falling from the balcony of her employer’s house.

The list goes on: Nepalese national Mina Rokaya, 24, and then Tezeta Yalmoya of Ethiopia, 26 – who also died, it was said, when she fell from the balcony.

“It’s a national tragedy,” Nadim Houry, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, tells IPS.

The workers leave their families behind to travel to Lebanon and look after strangers. Many are treated well by their employers; others are less fortunate.

Once in Lebanon, the women may be confined to their employer’s house, and have their passports confiscated and their salaries withheld, increasing their sense of isolation. Many women say they are not allowed out of the house, or get a day off. Complaints of sexual or psychological abuse are not uncommon.

Lebanon’s controversial sponsorship system means that workers are bound to their employers, and face incarceration if they leave. “It’s distressing to note that suicide for some is the only recourse to release from an abusive situation,” says Azfar Khan, senior migration specialist at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) regional office for the Arab states.

Police investigations are often inadequate, usually taking into consideration only the employer’s testimony and failing to cross-check it with neighbours or the worker’s friends or family, says Houry. If the woman is lucky enough to survive a suicide attempt, the police almost never provide her with a translator, or ask whether she had been abused. Cases where abusive employers are imprisoned “are the exception, not the rule,” says Houry.

The recent spate of deaths is not the first. A HRW study last year found that at least 95 women had died between Jan. 1, 2007 and Aug. 15, 2008 – a rate of more than one a week.

Aimee, a freelance domestic worker from Madagascar, has been in Lebanon for almost 12 years. As a community leader now, she helps workers in distress by offering a sympathetic ear and advice.

Many of the women she counsels do not receive a regular salary, or have been abused by their employers or recruitment agency officials. Agencies “check the women’s bags for phone numbers or addresses of their consulate,” Aimee tells IPS. Any numbers found are destroyed to prevent the woman seeking help. “How can they ask someone to work so far away from home and treat them like that?”

Lebanon’s growing notoriety as a hotbed for abuse of rights has compelled the governments of Ethiopia and the Philippines to issue bans on their nationals working in Lebanon. But this hasn’t stemmed the tide of migrants entering through third countries. Bans in any case only “transfer the problem from one nationality to another,” says Houry, because recruitment agencies simply look to new countries for women workers.

One reason for suicides is the false expectations recruitment agencies raise among migrant workers. Many women are led to believe they will work as nurses or as other professionals. “A lot of these women are recruited in rural areas – it’s like taking someone and plucking them into a totally different environment,” says Houry.

One Nepalese woman he spoke to after she broke her leg trying to escape her employer’s house said “she saw the snow on the mountains and thought if she could cross the mountain, she’d be in Nepal.”

Lebanese labour laws do not cover domestic workers. Without any legal protection, foreign workers are vulnerable to exploitation.

“The ILO has been pushing for domestic workers to be covered under labour law – not just in Lebanon but in other countries of the region – so that at least institutionally they enjoy protection and have the option to have their grievances addressed in court,” says Khan. “They are workers, so why should the labour law not apply to them?”

Lebanon has signed the International Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, but has yet to move towards signing the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families – a measure that would obligate it to take protection measures for the migrant community.

But more practical measures the Lebanese could take are to create a national hotline for distressed workers and a labour inspection force to monitor the treatment of migrants, says Houry. “More broadly, society has to mobilise. Not everyone is guilty of ill-treatment, but everyone has to feel responsible. People need to start speaking out and express that this is unacceptable.” (END/2009)

Daughters of globalisation

According to Ms. Mongaya Hoegsholm, in her talk entitled ‘Daughters of globalisation: Filipino women bridging the development gap’, the main push factor for Filipinas leaving the country in such huge numbers is poverty and its flipside: the lack of jobs or at least underemployment. In the Philippines, as in most Asian countries, the main focus is the family, and the main family value is education. In the case of the Philippines (which has a significant segment of its population in poverty in the rural areas), families still prioritise education, and without discriminating against girl children. But while the females in society educate themselves well (more women than men in the Philippines have PhDs), there are not enough possibilities in the job market, if at all. Therefore, the move from countryside to urban areas, thence from the overcrowded cities to leaving for abroad – even when accepting jobs not commensurate to their education – is a more and more common phenomenon, exemplified by au pairs in Europe.

Push and pull factors

Together with KULU and FOA (a labour union of unskilled workers), Filomenita Mongaya Hoegsholm founded a network of au pairs in Denmark with the aim of helping out the new arrivals from the Philippines. In her talk, she focused on the pull factors in this kind of feminised migration, namely the demographic deficit of an ageing Europe, where the elderly people need care, young women are busy with their careers, and young families need care for their young children and other household chores. It is for the latter that European countries open up for Filipina au pairs. Europe needs its cheap labour harnessed under what should strictly be a cultural exchange scheme for young people but is nowadays used as a source for young and cheap labour.

The disadvantage to Filipina women in this situation is not only the unfair labour practice of unjust compensation but also the fact of deskilling where their own educational qualifications slowly diminish from lack of use because they are mainly doing housework or ‘dirty work’. They also run the risk of becoming undocumented because of expired visas, which can occur unintentionally.

Double jeopardy

Filomenita also discussed diaspora philanthropy in the course of the evening. It is widely known that Filipino migrants send high remittances home. Filipinos rank among the top three worldwide in sending billions of dollars of money home. Here the Filipina women workers in Europe experience a double jeopardy: not only do they have obstacles in their everyday situation, fighting for labour rights and against discrimination, racial and gendered, but they also have to argue against European feminists who look at remittances as problematic.

While Filipina migrants see it as their primary aim in migration to help their families and thus send most of their earnings home, this is often seen negatively by European women coming from nuclear families. According to some views, remittances not only impinge on Official Development Assistance (ODA) but also affect a concept of family (as migrating women often leave their children back at home).   

But in fact there is a paradigm shift today, so even in the UN the annual assembly called the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) is precisely looking at the question of remittances – of course, without reneging on migrants’ rights in either the receiving or sending country.

The evening’s panel also consisted of Renate Anderl, the Chairperson of G-mtn frauen, and Helga Neumayer, who is Frauensolidaritaet’s Editor-in-Chief. There were quite a few questions fielded by the participants who came with other competences to add different perspectives to the topic of women and migration and how women mobilise against the current multiple crises resulting in poverty.

First published: WIDE October 2009 Newletter

Filomenita Mongaya Hoeghsolm is also one of five members of the Executive Committee of newly joined WIDE member, Babaylan, the Philippine Women’s Network in Europe, and is the Founding Chair of Babaylan Denmark. She will be addressing a CEDAW+30 Roundtable in Geneva on Women and Migration on 4 November.

It was the UN Secretary General at that time, Kofi Annan, and his Special Envoy on International Migration and Development, who tabled at the High Level Dialogue on the same topic the importance of a UN-level meeting for this area. So on 14–15 September 2006, within the framework of the General Assembly of the UN, it became reality to devote international attention each year to one of the most significant phenomena in modern history: migration, and how it could be harnessed for development.

In July 2007, the first meeting of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), which this UN-level meeting has come to be called, was held and hosted by the government of Belgium, in Brussels, the heart of Europe.

The GFMD is, among other things, an intergovernmental forum: a meeting of governments alternately hosted by a migrantreceiving and a migrant-sending country (after the Brussels meeting in 2007, it was Manila, the Philippines, who hosted the second conference in October 2008). The GFMD has three goals:

• to bring together government expertise from all regions to enhance dialogue, cooperation and partnership in the areas of migration and development;
• to address in a transparent manner the multidimensional aspects, opportunities and challenges related to international migration and its links with development; and
• to foster practical and action-oriented outcomes at the national, regional and global levels.

In 2009, the GFMD will again take place in a migrant-receiving country, Greece. Athens, the Greek capital, will be hosting this annual meeting of governments and stakeholders in the migration nexus, including NGOs and migrant groupings who want to be heard. In the context of the GFMD, it is considered vital that civil society groups are heard, so each host country takes it upon itself to choose some 200 delegates from all over the world, representing different sectors of society: immigrant organisations., migrant-rightsfocused NGOs, labour unions, immigrant media representatives etc. who are able to push the agenda through constructive discussions in roundtables and plenary sessions. The results of the two days of intense discussions on migration and development are then collated and presented to the governments who meet the following two days.
There is another forum within the context of the GFMD that creates space for alternative views and opinions to be presented. This goes under the parallel events, the ‘people-led’ activities, collectively called the People’s Global Action (PGA). As in other international UN-level conferences, a wide range of people’s organisations organise different kinds of activities and happenings to focus on the burning question of the day. These could be the familiar demonstrations, alternative conferences, cultural events etc. Some migrant coalitions prefer to hold congresses or discuss more pointedly the issues that bind them together – for example, migration and development policies – or to take a more popular topic: remittances. It is worth mentioning that remittances are now four to five times higher than the amounts of Official Development Assistance (ODA) that developing countries receive.
The annual GFMD thus is a unique space in which governments, while discussing bilaterally and multilaterally and perhaps negotiating certain agreements, are also able to hear and, hopefully, act on the recommendations of civil society and people’s organisations.

First published: WIDE October 2009 Newsletter

WIDE was represented at the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2009 by Filomenita Høgsholm from KULU, WIDE’s Danish Platform, and Babaylan, the Philippine Women’s Network in Europe. For more information, contact Filomenita Høgsholm: filomenitamh@gmail.com

The Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) og NGO delen, the Peoples’ Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA), blev afholdt i Manila i slutningen af oktober. Første konference om global migration fandt sted i Belgien i 2007, den anden i Manila i oktober 2008. Med til begge møder var KULU’s bestyrelsesmedlem, Filomenita Mongaya Høgsholm, fra Babaylan (Philippine Women’s Network).
Ca. 240 civilsamfundsdelegerede fra alle verdensdele deltog i Civil Society Days den 27.-28. oktober. Fokus var på de migrerendes arbejdstagerrettigheder. I øvrigt var der under de to dages forløb den sidste eftermiddag mulighed for at holde en “interface” mellem civil samfundets delegerede og regerings repræsentanter. Under selve regeringskonferencen den 29. og 30. oktober fik CS repræsentanter lov at præsentere deres udtalelser og bemærkninger under en halv times tilstedeværelse i det officielle møde mellem regeringerne.

Ms. Sahran Burrow (præsident for ACTU, Austalian Council of Trade Union) udtaler, at man her ikke kan komme udenom en grundig diskussion af rettigheder, ikke mindst for de papirløse aupairer (undocumented), da de er mere skrøbelige og udsatte for yderligere misbrug og diskrimination.

Samtidig var der også en diskussion om “remittances”, dvs. pengeoverførsler til oprindelseslandene i milliarder af dollar, der på det sidste er steget så meget, at de nu udgør mere end  4-5 gange de bistandspenge, som i-landene sender hvert år, med samme formål: At hjælpe befolkningerne til at hjælpe sig selv ud af fattigdom.