Human Rights for Domestic Workers
Date: 14/12/2009 – 15:59
Women Migrant Workers
CARAM Asia a regional network of 34 NGOs and trade unions across 17 countries in Asia makes the call to governments across the globe to respect the rights and dignity of migrant workers especially domestic workers.
Human Rights for Domestic Workers
Date: 14/12/2009 – 15:59
Women Migrant Workers
CARAM Asia a regional network of 34 NGOs and trade unions across 17 countries in Asia makes the call to governments across the globe to respect the rights and dignity of migrant workers especially domestic workers.
We urge governments especially host countries that employ migrant labour to amend restrictive legislation to include provisions and minimum labour standards for domestic workers.
We further call upon all employers, as important non state actors, to recognize that the time has come to put all poor practices aside and accord migrant workers, especially domestic workers (MDWs) a weekly paid day off from work.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that there are more than a million women who engage in domestic work worldwide. There are over 300,000 MDWs in Malaysia, about 70,000 in Bahrain, and the more than 200,000 respectively in Singapore, Thailand and Lebanon.
The statistics continue to alarm us. In the past 5 months, three Indonesian migrant workers were tortured to death by their Malaysian employers. In Lebanon, at least 10 women have died, either by hanging themselves or by falling from tall buildings over the past two months, in desperation to escape.
CARAM Asia’s member in Singapore, the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (H.O.M.E.) respond to more than 3000 calls in a year on their helpline for migrant workers. All the MDWs in those cases suffer from some form of mental abuse. They are overworked without any rest days, employers breach contractual obligations and placed them on debt bondage. Such complaints usually result in repatriation without any form of compensation for the exploited worker.
A weekly paid day off for MDWs will not only prevent suicides, and gender based violence and torture, most importantly it will grant an opportunity for tortured MDWs to escape abuse or exploitation.
Such a move will act as a progression in line with international labour and human rights standards. 186 countries have adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and therefore bound by its terms. The General Comment 26 of the CEDAW Convention acknowledges that domestic work should be protected by labour laws and entitled to holiday and vocation leave regulations.
Next year, the International Labour Organization (ILO) will start working on the process of adopting a new minimum labour standard for domestic workers that could possibly lead to a new specific Domestic Workers Convention. With the international community moving towards acknowledging the labour rights of domestic workers, we urge governments of host countries, to develop minimum standards of human rights for these workers, and strongly urge employers across the Asian continuum to move away from the slavery practice of binding workers to work without a day off.
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