Trafficked and abused: Indonesia's Middle East maid ban ...

"Mulyadi from rights group Migrant Care, which has assisted Sari and Hatmiati's families, urged Indonesia to review the ban."

""The government should re-evaluate the ban as it violates a person's fundamental rights to seek employment overseas," said Mulyadi, a co-founder of the group."

"He warned that a government plan to stop sending women overseas to work as domestic helpers in any country from this year would make the situation worse

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Trafficked and abused: Indonesia's Middle East maid ban ...:

Reporting by Beh Lih Yi @behlihyi, Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Hong Kong trafficking case leads to High Court review - CNN.com

"Hong Kong is one of the few places in Asia that does not criminalize human trafficking and forced labor." ...

"The Hong Kong government argues that conduct known as human trafficking is covered by a number of existing local laws, including physical abuse, false imprisonment and criminal intimidation."

Read MORE

Hong Kong trafficking case leads to High Court review - CNN.com:

Modern day slavery | CCTV America: The 2016 Global Slavery Index

Modern day slavery | CCTV America:

Photographing Human Trafficking in New York - The New York Times

Photographing Human Trafficking in New York - The New York Times:

Debate: Prevention and Victim Compensation | Human Rights Watch

Author(s): 

 Nisha Varia

Published in: 

 Anti-Trafficking Review

Afroza, a Bangladeshi woman who worked for sixteen years without getting paid and was not allowed to go home to visit her family. Keni, an Indonesian woman whose employers injured her with a hot iron, leaving disfiguring third-degree burns all over her body. Kartika, an older Sri Lankan woman whose employers made her work around the clock without pay, shaved her head to humiliate her and gouged pieces of flesh out of her arm with knives. 

Read more:

Debate: Prevention and Victim Compensation | Human Rights Watch:

Indonesia bans UAE ‘trafficking agencies’ - The National

Source: The National

The embassy has informed the Indonesian government in Jakarta and documents from the concerned companies will no longer be authenticated, ambassador Salman Al Farisi confirmed. Delores Johnson / The National

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/indonesia-bans-uae-trafficking-agencies#ixzz2bsp0zrrJ

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Editorial: Rights for Domestic Workers in California

Editorial: Rights for Domestic Workers in California: The nannies, cooks, baby sitters and others have long been excluded from fundamental protections other workers enjoy. California should close that gap.

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Nisha Varia: The Hidden Victims of Human Trafficking

Nisha Varia

Senior women's rights researcher, Human Rights Watch

06/29/11

Being forced into domestic servitude is one of the most common forms of human trafficking. Yet it remains one of the most invisible, including meager media coverage and law enforcement efforts. On June 27, the US State Department released itsTrafficking in Persons (TIP) report, an annual ranking of how well -- or how badly -- countries around the world are doing to fight modern forms of slavery. The report is a sobering litany of horrific abuses, including against domestic workers, and the faltering efforts of many governments to stop these crimes.

I have spent several years trying to raise the profile of domestic workers' rights in Asia and the Middle East. While migrant domestic workers can have kind employers and good work experiences, I have interviewed hundreds of women who have endured hellishly long working hours without rest, been forced to work months or years without pay, were starved, beaten, or burned with hot irons, or suffered routine humiliation and were locked up in the homes where they worked.

A landmark treaty adopted less than two weeks ago may help to change that, however. On June 16, members of the International Labor Organization (ILO), including governments, trade unions, and employers' groups from around the world, created the first legally binding global labor standards for domestic work, requiring the same types of labor protections for domestic workers that other workers get. This treaty makes huge strides in recognizing the valuable services provided by nannies and housecleaners, and establishing the legal measures required to prevent labor exploitation and trafficking into domestic servitude.

Many of the worst offenders in this year's TIP report are not a big surprise. They include countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Lebanon where it's common for households to employ immigrant women as live-in nannies and housekeepers but where these workers are left out of coverage by labor laws and basic protections such as freedom to leave the workplace on days off. Should they even get a day off. The countries that send these workers are not far behind in the rankings, including Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. They have yet to effectively rein in the middlemen who recruit women from villages, deceive them about the conditions of work abroad, and extract huge recruitment fees that leave them indebted.

All of these countries, despite early opposition from some of them, voted in favor of the new ILO convention on domestic work. The treaty tackles areas where weak government action has often opened up the door to abuse, such as exempting domestic workers from child labor laws, a hands-off approach to responding to workplace violence in private homes, inadequate regulation of live-in domestic work, and poor monitoring of recruitment agencies.

There is a long road from adopting such standards to integrating them into national laws and enforcing them on the ground. But the very recognition of domestic workers as "workers" protected by labor laws -- rather than helpers, servants, or second-class "members of the family" -- narrows the space for abuse by heightening visibility, access to legal remedies, and shifts in attitudes.

Countries looking for concrete ways to tackle the scourge of human trafficking should quickly sign on to the ILO convention on domestic work and make the necessary reforms to be in compliance. Those that do might avoid the embarrassment of being highlighted again in next year's TIP report as a country that has allowed modern-day slavery to flourish in its backyard.

Source: huffingtonpost.com

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The plight of domestic workers abroad - Inside Story - Al Jazeera English

Indonesia is stopping their nationals going to Saudi Arabia to work as maids after one woman was beheaded last week.

Inside Story Last Modified: 29 Jun 2011 11:32

Indonesia is stopping all maids from going to work in Saudi Arabia after the beheading of a maid last week for murdering her allegedly abusive employer.

The execution of 54-year-old Ruhati Binti Sapahi caused public outrage in Indonesia, prompting the government to call for the ban.

Saudi Arabia did not inform the Indonesian ambassador that the execution was going to take place but apologised afterwards for the "mistake".

Twenty-two other Indonesian workers are also on death row in Saudi Arabia.

Indonesia has 1.5 million workers in Saudi Arabia alone, most of them women. In total Indonesia has 6 million workers abroad, again mainly women. Last year they remitted $7bn to their families in Indonesia.

But what does it take to protect their rights? And who is to blame for their suffering?

Inside Story, with presenter Folly Bah Thibault, discusses with Simel Esim, a senior regional technical specialist on gender equality and women worker's rights for the International Labour Organization, and Christoph Wilcke, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, specialising in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/06/20116297232774383.html

This episode of Inside Story aired from June 28, 2011.

Source: Inside Story - Al Jazeera English

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The Associated Press: Rights group: Mideast maids unprotected from abuse

By BARBARA SURK (AP) – 2 hours ago

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Reforms undertaken by governments in the Middle East to protect domestic workers from abuse are insufficient to shield women working as house maids from abuse and violence, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Millions of mostly Asian women who work in countries like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates remain at risk of human trafficking, forced labor, confinement and sexual violence, the New York-based group said.

Although several governments have made improvements for migrant domestic workers in the past five years, reform has been slow and incremental, Nisha Varia, the group's senior researcher of women's rights told The Associated Press.

"There has been a big change in the sense that these countries are recognizing there is a problem," Varia said in a phone interview. "But while many governments are introducing reforms, most have yet to implement them."

The 26-page report released Thursday documents progress in extending protections to mostly Asian women working as house maids in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and the Emirates.

Women working in private homes often work 20-hour days, face forced confinement and are sometimes physically and sexually abused, the report said.

Their passports are confiscated upon arrival, leaving employers in full control of their house maids' lives under what is known as a "sponsorship system."

The custom remains the biggest factor contributing to abuse, leaving women trapped in abusive situations since they are not allowed to legally change an employer, HRW said.

The group also urged that it's essential that domestic workers' rights — now governed by immigration law in most Mideast countries — are included in the labor law, assuring them of basic rights such as setting their work hours, regulating the quality of food and housing they get and guaranteeing them a day off a week.

"Governments will have to think creatively how to reach out to women working in private homes," Varia said. "It is a unique working environment."

While Human Rights Watch praised Jordan for including domestic work in the country's labor law, it said that "enforcement remains a big concern."

Most migrant workers in the Middle East — 1,5 million, according to HRW's assessment — are employed in Saudi Arabia. About 200,000 migrants work in Lebanon and 660,000 in Kuwait.

Domestic work in foreign countries is an important source of employment for women in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal, India, and Ethiopia. Their earnings abroad amount to much of the billions of dollars of remittances sent home each year.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The Associated Press: Rights group: Mideast maids unprotected from abuse

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A plea for two lost daughters | National news | The Phnom Penh Post - Cambodia's Newspaper of Record

Thursday, 21 January 2010 15:02 May Titthara

[TRAFFICKING MONITOR: Click on URL below to view photo.]
Photo by: Photo Supplied
Takeo province native Sam Pao holds photographs of the two daughters she sold into domestic servitude nine years ago. In an interview last week, she said she has not seen them since 2005.

A WOMAN from Takeo province has launched a public appeal for help in finding her two missing daughters, who she says may have been trafficked out of the country after she sold them into domestic servitude.

In an interview last week, Sam Pao said she had not seen Lim Phala and Lim Phalli since 2005. As she clutched a photo of the two girls, she said she had no choice but to volunteer them for jobs as domestic helpers nine years ago, when the two were 14 and 9 years old.

“I had no ability to support my family,” Sam Pao said as tears streamed down her face. She added that, at the time, she had four other children to support and no steady source of income.

Under the terms of the deal she struck with the girls’ employer, she said, she agreed to a “loan” of 1 million riels (US$240) that her daughters would work off.

At first, Sam Pao ventured to Phnom Penh to visit them once or twice a year, and she said they seemed comfortable in their positions.

But in 2005, that all changed, she said. The daughters’ employer suddenly barred all contact, and Sam Pao received only fleeting assurances from the woman that the girls were safe.

Within months, Sam Pao had decided to try to get her daughters back. But when she came to the capital towards the end of 2005, the woman insisted she was still owed money. Gradually, all attempts to contact her failed.

“I just want to see the owner of the house where my daughters worked,” she said. “I just want to know what happened to my daughters.”

A dangerous path
Rights groups who research or work with trafficked women say many more young Cambodian girls have been placed in positions in which they are effectively living in servitude.

But because domestic workers are often hidden behind closed doors, it is difficult to determine how many are living in similar danger.

“With domestic servants, because it’s a hidden profession and not regulated by the government, it’s very difficult to track these young girls,” said John McGeoghan, project coordinator with the Phnom Penh office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

IOM research suggests a link between domestic workers and more dangerous professions. A 2007 IOM report on child domestic workers found 51 percent of sex workers surveyed reported that they were formerly employed as domestic workers.

“There is a path of vulnerability from poor families, to domestic servitude and onwards into other vulnerable professions,” McGeoghan said.

The rights group Adhoc has pledged to investigate Sam Pao’s allegations, according to Lim Mony, the head of the NGO’s women’s programme.

The woman Sam Pao identified as her daughters’ employer, known only by the name Pao, refused to comment when contacted by the Post.

Sam Pao said that, at this point, she just wants to know whether her daughters are alive.

She said she was prompted to launch her appeal by a recent radio report that stated that two girls with identical names had died in Malaysia.

“I want to find any authorities or NGOs that can help me,” she said. “Please help me. I just want to see my daughters.”A plea for two lost daughters | National news | The Phnom Penh Post - Cambodia's Newspaper of Record