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Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

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Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

Events and News

E-Bulletin October 2015: News from the GAATW International Secretariat

Labour Trafficking Case Analysis Workshop

AccesstoJusticeLebanon

The Access to Justice Programme of GAATW-IS currently has a South Asia-Middle East focus. We are engaged in a two-year project that aims to identify and address barriers that trafficked overseas migrant workers from South Asia face in countries of origin and destination when accessing justice. The project focuses on workers from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan. While the primary focus is on countries of destination, keeping in mind the continuum of rights violation that workers face, the project aims to analyse the scenario at both ends and hopes to strengthen coordination among NGOs providing legal and psychosocial assistance to migrant workers.

To begin this project, GAATW and partner organisations participated in three labour exploitation case analysis and documentation workshops, which took place on 31 July – 3 August in Bangkok, Thailand, 24-25 August in Beirut, Lebanon and 31 August – 1 September in Amman, Jordan. The Bangkok workshop brought together representatives from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. The Beirut workshop included local trade unions and Lebanese organisations that provide legal aid to domestic workers. Participants in the Amman workshop came from Kuwait, as well as Jordan, and also included officials from the Ministry of Justice of Jordan and the Jordanian Public Security Department’s Counter-Trafficking Unit.

All partners in this project are legal service providers and have some kind of internal system to record and analyse the complaints they receive from migrant workers. However, the types of legal services they provide vary and are often only a part of the many types of assistance available from the organisation. Our desk research and discussions with partners indicate that, while it has been possible to use the national anti-trafficking legislation to seek redress for abused domestic workers in countries like Lebanon and Jordan, it is not the case in other focus countries of the project. Therefore, the project used these workshops as an opportunity to understand the reasons behind this limited use of anti-trafficking legislation. It was also important to understand why on many occasions, non-legal solutions are seen as more practical and just solutions to rights violations of migrant workers. Through discussions on how each organisation and its beneficiaries view justice, the barriers trafficked migrant workers face when accessing justice, the most common types of cases the participants take, examples of good practices for providing legal aid to trafficked migrant workers, and ideas and goals for future collaboration, the workshops provided the participants and the Access to Justice Programme with an initial starting point to help develop action plans for the future work of the project. A full summary of the discussions will be available shortly.

 

 

Community Workers Training: Work in Freedom Project

CommunityWorkersTraining WIF Bangladesh

In July and September 2015, GAATW-IS and two partner organisations from Bangladesh, Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) and Association for Community Development (ACD), co-organised training workshops for Community Workers within the Work in Freedom project. The workshops brought together field workers, community trainers and project staff with the aim to strengthen their human rights-based perspective and conceptual clarity on trafficking and migration, and at the same time to enhance the capacity of partner organisations to support women in their communities in making well informed decisions about safe migration.

The training sessions focused on enhancing the participants’ understanding of women’s labour migration from a human rights perspective and the trafficking-migration nexus. The workshop was also an opportunity to reflect on the strengths and challenges of community interventions and understanding the empowerment process in the lived realities of women in the communities where our partners work. 

 

Launch of Anti-Trafficking Review, Issue 5, ‘Forced Labour and Human Trafficking’

ATR5 launch

29 September, GAATW launched the 5th issue of the Anti-Trafficking Review in Bangkok, in conjunction with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. All articles from the issue, guest edited by Nicola Piper and Marie Segrave, are freely available at www.antitraffickingreview.org.

Two authors presented their research at the launch event, and GAATW founder Dr. Jyoti Sanghera moderated.

Anna Olsen from the ILO GMS TRIANGLE project presented The Role of Trade Unions in Reducing Migrant Workers’ Vulnerability to Forced Labour and Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Subregion, describing trade union work in Thailand and Malaysia to overcome challenges to unionisation of migrant workers. Though unionisation rates remain low in the region, collective bargaining is important in the fight against forced labour and trafficking. Anna Olsen and co-author Eliza Marks describe a ‘labour approach’ to anti-trafficking in their paper, involving systemic changes to ensure labour protections for all. They argue that a ‘labour approach’ would be beneficial to anti-trafficking work globally.

The second paper, presented by Daphne Demetriou, was ‘Tied Visas’ and Inadequate Labour Protections: A formula for abuse and exploitation of migrant domestic workers in the United Kingdom. In the new Modern Slavery Act the ‘kafala’-type visa for domestic workers remains, despite active NGO lobby to abolish it. In addition, labour laws are only selectively applied to domestic workers. Workers with a visa tied to one employer often find themselves trapped in exploitative situations without the ability to leave or access justice. The restrictive immigration regime has increased instances of abuses in the domestic work sector in the UK. Better immigration laws are needed to protect the rights of domestic workers.

See these and other articles on the journal’s website

 

Media Workshop: ‘Women: Agents Of Change Or Victims Of Abuse? : Reporting Labour Migration’

Media workshopGAATW International Secretariat organised a four-day workshop on 3-6 October 2015 in Bangkok as part of GAATW’s efforts to bring back the focus on women migrants from victims and sensationalised objects to agents of change, and subjects of hope, determination, and self-reliance.

The workshop brought together journalists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka to share and analyse the way women migrants are portrayed and to better understand from them what drives a story and how articles are framed. Participants received detailed information about the international legal framework on migration, human rights and gender and also had the chance to visit organisations supporting migrant workers in Bangkok and learn first-hand about the difficulties that migrant workers and their families in Thailand face. At the end of the workshop, a plan was drawn up to strengthen affirmative and realistic reporting on labour migration through an enhanced focus on accuracy, fairness, balance, human rights and representation of migrant women in the media.