Originally posted on http://ethiopiansuicides.blogspot.com/

Very few details were reported about either case, but from the information available it appears that on July 14th, a 35-year-old maid from Horowpathana, Sri-Lanka, set herself on fire in her employer’s home. She was rushed to the hospital in critical condition where she died on the next day from organ failure and severe burns. On July 25th, the Jordanian daily Al-Doustor reported that another Sri-Lankan maid attempted to kill herself in As-Salt, jumping from the third floor.

Jordan’s labor laws are considered very progressive for the region. Jordan is the only Arab country to include domestic workers under the scope of its labor laws. Employers are obligated to pay salaries directly to the workers’ bank accounts, buy health insurance for their workers and limit the working hours to ten per day. However, the law does not prohibit employers from confining workers to their household and confiscating passports. A 2009 study by the Labor Watch Project at the Phoenix Centre for Economic and Information Studies showed that enforcement of Jordan’s labor laws is lacking. In many cases workers were paid less than the minimum wage (150 JD, $211), overtime work was not compensated, employers prohibited the workers from leaving for annual leaves, and other workers reported of verbal and physical abuse.

Poor living and working conditions are often the cause of suicide by migrant workers. While Jordan’s progressive labor laws should be commended, a tighter enforcement of those laws may be able to save the lives of such workers who turn to suicide as a way out of their desperate situation.

Several reports in the past few months have addressed this phenomenon, and yet no solution is in sight for many of the workers. The latest Reuters report from a labor camp in the industrial zone in Sharjah described the “collateral damage” of the economic meltdown. The 350 workers in that camp have gone unpaid for the last six to 12 months. Initially they were made to work without pay with promises that they’ll be paid later, and after the company went bankrupt, they were left to fend for themselves. Their passports, which were illegally confiscated by their employer, were retrieved by the Indian embassy, but the workers have received no confirmation that they’ll be paid their wages or sent home.

The workers subsist on donations, and in other cases buy food on credit. Water, electricity and gas were cut from the camps, and the workers are forced to live without air-conditioning in a 47 degree heat. The workers, who arrive to the UAE after paying exorbitant recruitment fees (between $2000-$4000 with a monthly salary of $217) are unable to pay back their loans, sinking deeper and deeper into debt. This desperation has driven at least one worker to taking his own life.

The UAE labor ministry has been slowly stepping in to solve the problem of stranded workers. Over 1,000 workers have already been paid their wages and sent home, as thousands more await resolution of their dire situation.

In a very enlightening debate I had with a couple of managers a while ago, I was stunned to see how smooth it was for them to openly defend paying an Indian 10% of what they pay to a Jordanian, knowing that both will pretty much accomplish the same amount of work, simply because the Indian was… well, a bloody Indian!

The Omani girl in the office, who I am still not sure whether she has 20 exact black Abayahas or she never changes her outfit, cracks the hell out of me every time she tries to start a “global” conversation going on about the world around us, it is one of my greatest pleasures in this place to listen to her and get blown away day after another by the way she was brought up and the ideas that were stuffed in her brain. The latest of that was a few days ago; she was passing by an Indian assistant, who apparently never showers, then covered her nose with disgust, when she approached me, she mumbled that the guy smells so bad, but guess what, to her, it was not because of his body fluids, it was due to the fact that he was not a Muslim!

In the first few days after I arrived to Muscat, I was sent for a couple of check ups and some paper filling to get my residency. Now, despite that fact that bureaucracy was not as bad as I thought it would be, I had one of my first encounters with open racism in its most clear forms; as I was sitting on a long bench outside some hall waiting for one of the papers to get done, a group of Indian workers arrived to do the same, those poor guys were accompanied by their Omani employer who ordered them to sit on the bench and wait. They all obeyed at once and rushed to the bench, this is when one Omani, who was apparently an employee there, noticed that they left spaces between each other that could fit a couple more, so he started cussing and shouting at them to squeeze in together. Although I can promise that it was the first time he saw them, he called each and every one of them stupid and commanded them as if he was their master. The poor workers squeezed in as if their lives depended on it, and when they did that, I got squeezed in with them, this is when the same Omani spotted me and immediately asked me to move away from them; “I am sorry for those idiots, you can sit on the other side.” He assured me. To my understanding, the only difference between me and them was that I had a whiter skin and did not wear slippers.

Life goes on here like that, until you get to a point where you don’t know whether it’s wrong or right, you see everyone settled to it; from the Indian down the chain to the Englishman on top.

Cross posted from MideastYouth.com

According to the LCHR, “having had a scooter accident, he was hospitalized two months ago, suffered multiple fractures (arm, leg and pelvis) and underwent several operations, including the installation of an external fixator at the pelvis level. He is currently held in a very dirty, overcrowded cell, his bones would be getting infected, he cannot walk, and is losing completely mobility in his legs. For several days, he has not been eating, nor drinking, has been vomiting continuously and seems extremely dehydrated. He only seems to be receiving paracetamol for treatment purposes.”

The LCHR has called for the immediate transfer of Sany Kumar to the hospital. Otherwise, he risks at a minimum, permanently losing the use of his legs and, at worst, losing his life.

We urge the Lebanese authorities to make in the coming hours the decision to transfer Sany Kumar to a health care setting, and in case the medical director of the prison refuses, that he be immediately examined by an independent doctor. We also asked the Justice System to expedite its decision and to show clemency for humanitarian reasons, and the Embassy of India to take all necessary measures to repatriate him to his country.

For additional information:
Marie DAUNAY, President
Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH)
Bakhos blg. 1st floor, St. Joseph Hospital Street
Dora – Beirut, Lebanon
Tel : +961 1 24 00 23 / +961 3 887 108
www.cldh-lebanon.org

Below is the video of Anti Racism Movement activists trying to get a migrant domestic worker into the swimming pool. The activists are allowed in, but not the “maid”.

Original post, press release and additional information: http://ethiopiansuicides.blogspot.com/2010/07/swimming-pool-denies-entry-to-migrant.html

Arabic post and press release: http://ethiopiansuicides.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-post_5814.html

Originally posted on http://ethiopiansuicides.blogspot.com

Migration is perhaps the most ‘overlooked’ phenomenon of modern times, argues Jason DeParle. Nevertheless, stories involving migrants, directly or indirectly, keep on cropping up in the international media, such as reports from earlier this year that a Thai farmworker in Israel was killed by a Hamas rocket. The article is mainly about migration in the US and its impact on political debates, but DeParle makes some interesting points that are applicable to the situation in the Middle East, such as this:

Theorists sometimes call the movement of people the third wave of globalization, after the movement of goods (trade) and the movement of money (finance) that began in the previous century. But trade and finance follow global norms and are governed by global institutions: the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. There is no parallel group with “migration” in its name. The most personal and perilous form of movement is the most unregulated. States make (and often ignore) their own rules, deciding who can come, how long they stay, and what rights they enjoy.

This is a serious point and certainly applies to migrant workers in the Middle East, where governments seem to make up the rules as they go along when it comes to guest workers. In this context, are existing multilaterals and international legal instruments enough to protect the rights of vulnerable economic migrants?

A few weeks ago we blogged about how Migrant Forum Asia had complained that existing labour conventions were not sufficient to protect female domestic workers. Do these forgotten millions deserve more attention? Undoubtedly yes.

Migration has been happening for centuries, but several factors make movement of people in this generation different from any other, according to the article:

First is migration’s global reach. The movements of the 19th century were mostly trans-Atlantic. Now, Nepalis staff Korean factories and Mongolians do scut work in Prague. Persian Gulf economies would collapse without armies of guest workers. Even within the United States, immigrants are spread across dozens of “new gateways” unaccustomed to them, from Orlando to Salt Lake City.

A second distinguishing trait is the money involved, which not only sustains the families left behind but props up national economies. Migrants sent home $317 billion last year — three times the world’s total foreign aid. In at least seven countries, remittances account for more than a quarter of the gross domestic product.

A third factor that increases migration’s impact is its feminization: Nearly half of the world’s migrants are now women, and many have left children behind. Their emergence as breadwinners is altering family dynamics across the developing world. Migration empowers some, but imperils others, with sex trafficking now a global concern.

Global migrants are more numerous than ever before. The stakes are high, and the risks numerous for the millions of workers on the move around the world. But more often than not – especially in the Middle East – migrant workers stay out of sight and out of mind

(M-R.org and Mideast Youth Readers may be interested to know that this is the first year that the US itself has been assessed for the report. Its scores were high but by no means perfect).

Forced labour, restrictions on movement, physical and sexual abuse and exploitation by recruitment brokers have emerged as region-wide trends. Women who migrate to the Gulf States to work as domestic workers are at particular risk of being trafficked.

Here are some extracts from the report on some of the countries that M-R.org follows:

Bahrain

Bahrain is a destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and prostitution. Men and women from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Ethiopia and Eritrea migrate voluntarily to Bahrain to work as domestic workers or unskilled laborers in the construction and service industries. Some, however, face conditions of forced labor after arriving in Bahrain, through use of such practices as unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, contract substitution, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical and sexual abuse.

Israel
“Israel is a destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. Low-skilled workers from Thailand, China, Nepal, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, and, to a lesser extent, Romania and Turkey, migrate voluntarily and legally to Israel for contract labor in construction, agriculture, and home health care provision. Some, however, subsequently face conditions of forced labor, including through such practices as the unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, inability to change or otherwise choose one’s employer, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical intimidation. Many labor recruitment agencies in source countries and in Israel require workers to pay recruitment fees typically ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, although Chinese workers often paid more than $20,000 – a practice making workers highly vulnerable to trafficking or debt bondage once in Israel. Traffickers are usually the migrant workers’ legal employers and the recruitment agents in both Israel and in the migrants’ home countries. Women from the former Soviet Union and China are subjected to forced prostitution in Israel, although the number of women affected has declined since the passage and implementation of Israel’s 2006 anti-trafficking bill. A small number of Israeli women are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation.”

Kuwait

“Kuwait is a destination country for men and women, some of whom are subsequently subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor. The majority of trafficking victims are from among the approximately 550,000 foreign women recruited for domestic service work in Kuwait. Men and women migrate from India, Egypt, Bangladesh, Syria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, Iran, Jordan, and Iraq to work in Kuwait, most of them in the domestic service, construction, and sanitation industries. Although these migrants enter Kuwait voluntarily, upon arrival some are subjected to conditions of forced labor by their sponsors and labor agents, including through such practices as non-payment of wages, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and restrictions on movement, such as the withholding of passports. Labor recruitment agencies and their subagents at the community level in South Asia may coerce or defraud workers into accepting work in Kuwait that turns out to be exploitative and, in some instances, constitutes involuntary servitude.
In some cases, arriving migrant workers have found the terms of employment in Kuwait are wholly different from those they agreed to in their home countries, making them vulnerable to human trafficking. As a result of such contract fraud, the Government of Indonesia in October 2009 banned further migration of domestic workers to Kuwait. Some 600 Indonesian domestic workers sought refuge in the Indonesian embassy in Kuwait in the last year; some of these domestic workers may have been victims of trafficking. Some of these workers arrive in the country to find their promised jobs do not exist. Many of the migrant workers arriving for work in Kuwait have paid exorbitant fees to recruiters in their home countries – a practice making workers highly vulnerable to forced labor once in Kuwait. Some unscrupulous Kuwaiti sponsors and recruiting agents prey on some of these migrants by charging them high amounts for residency visas, which foreign workers are supposed to receive for free. Adult female migrant workers are particularly vulnerable and consequently are often victims of nonconsensual commercial sexual exploitation and forced prostitution. Some domestic workers have fled from employers, and subsequently have been coerced into prostitution.”