Equality for Migrant Workers Amid Financial Crisis

The majority of migrant’s originate from the poorest sectors of the globe and frequently face discriminatory policies in countries of destination due to their class, race or gender.  As a network comprised of migrant and health based organisations, CARAM Asia demands that all governments immediately take action to ensure the rights of migrants within their borders and eliminate all discriminatory policies that alienate and stigmatise mobile populations. Migrant workers contribute a great deal to their host countries, both economically and socially, and CARAM Asia firmly believes that migrant workers must be allocated the same rights as everybody else.

 

As a result of increased levels of globalisation, the international community have continually twinned the issue of migration to that of development. This persistently reduces the role of the migrant worker to that of a commodity whereby the question of rights becomes seconded behind that of economic prosperity.  This was recently illustrated by the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) held in the Philippines where the international community failed to contemplate the root causes and effects of migration.  In order to establish any credibility when formulating policy initiatives, it is crucial that the international community actively engage migrant and Civil Society Organisations on a direct level of consultation through progressive right’s based initiatives.      

 

The dynamics of migration are also changing and mobility amongst women now constitutes as much as fifty percent of the world’s migrant population. This female migrant demographic are unfortunately more susceptible to unprotected channels such as human trafficking and this remains a crucial issue of concern. Female migrants largely inhabit the domestic sector as Foreign Domestic Workers (FDWs) often originating from Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines.  Once in a country of destination, FDWs often find themselves in conditions of solitary confinement, chained to their employers and highly vulnerable to criminal abuses including physical and sexual attacks. In a large number of these cases, the crimes go unreported and the perpetrators are never brought to prosecution.   

 

Over the past thirty years, Asia has become one of the main supplies of cheap unskilled labour, as developing countries in the region frequently become reliant on Labour Export Policies (LEPs) and the subsequent remittances that they generate.  While there is evidence to suggest that in the short term, remittances contribute to alleviate poverty, malnutrition and develop infrastructure, the long term effects of LEPs are often overlooked and dismissed.  Such national policies fail to consider that the income generated only traps the national economies into a state of neo-liberal dependence, leading to further economic polarisation. Many developing countries in the region have also been known to use remittances to alleviate foreign indebtedness and counter balance trade deficits.  Remittances are the private funds of migrant workers and should never be used to sustain mismanaged economic policies or platforms.

 

Furthermore, migrant community’s quality of life should never be ascertained on a purely financial basis as health, job insecurity and discriminatory polices further act as indicators.  The health of migrant workers is frequently neglected by host states in both the work related and social arena.    As health care systems increasingly shift to profit centred services, migrant communities frequently lack both the access and finance to health services and the only time that the health of migrants is looked into is when they are subjected to mandatory testing for HIV.  Such policies are enforced in over seventy countries worldwide but have no empirical evidence to reduce the spread of HIV and fly in the face of Universal Access Plan 2010, by further stigmatising positive people.  Further more, initiatives such as these not only deem migrants as deviant, but also identifies HIV/AIDS as a foreign problem.

 

Developing countries often do very little to ensure the protection of their populace once they are outside of their borders.  Many less developed countries (LDCs) continually limit enforcement mechanisms or effective bilateral protective measures so that their  labour force are perceived as more marketable to foreign governments and multi-national corporations.  CARAM Asia demands an immediate increase in the levels of communication between country of origin and destination and for the greater involvement of embassies to provide closer contact with their citizens.

 

As an example, ASEAN member states should honour their recent Declaration on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers with a speedy implementation of mechanisms to enforce this agenda. As the ASEAN Charter had recently come into force, CARAM Asia urges all applicable government’s to live up to their commitments and promote security and rights of migrants throughout the region. 

 

CARAM Asia recommends that; - 

·         Member states ratify the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families

·         Governments enact laws and adopt other measures to ensure that the rights of domestic workers are protected legally and to change the national labour laws that do not protect domestic worker’s rights

·         The United Nations and International Labour Organisation (ILO) develop new mechanisms for the protection and realisation of domestic workers rights

·         Remove mandatory health, HIV and pregnancy testing policies and the following deportation of pregnant women migrants, positive migrants and other illnesses

·         Affordable healthcare services for migrant workers irrespective of their documentation·        

·         Government’s develop redress mechanisms for more effective accountability of non-state actors (employees, recruitment, brokers) for violations against migrant workers
·       The enforcement of the ASEAN Declaration into a practical preventative protection framework for migrant workers