Facilitating women migrant workers

Information on the “Safe and Fair: Realising women migrant workers’ rights and opportunities in the ASEAN region” programme was provided by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the UN Women at an advisory dialogue held in Hanoi on May 10.

Accordingly, the programme is part of the Spotlight Initiative to Eliminate Violence against Women and Girls, a global, multi-year initiative between the European Union (EU) and the UN. Safe and Fair is implemented by the ILO and UN Women in the ten ASEAN member states, targeting safe and fair labour migration for all women in the region by addressing women migrant workers’ vulnerabilities, enhancing their access to essential services and strengthening rights-based and gender-responsive approaches to violence against women and migration governance.

Speaking at the dialogue, Dr. Chang-Hee Lee, Director of the ILO Country Office for Vietnam, said that international labour migration in ASEAN has increased manifold throughout the region over the past decades, with around ten million migrants in the ASEAN and roughly half being women.

In Vietnam, data for 2017 indicates that more than 39.6% of Vietnamese migrants are women. The main regular corridors for women are to Chinese Taipei, Japan, Malaysia and especially to Saudi Arabia, where a large proportion (95%) are women who work as domestic labourers.

Migrant women are able to access higher paid jobs, whilst increasing their agency and improving their position in the family and community. In 2015, the World Bank estimated that approximately US$12.3 billion was sent home by Vietnamese migrants, ranking the country 11th in the world for remittance inflows. It is estimated that women’s remittances can make up half of these remittances.

However, according to Dr. Chang, migrant women still face widespread exploitation and abuse. Reports of abuse and exploitation of domestic workers have been recorded in all countries where Vietnamese domestic workers are employed.

Delegates at the dialogue share information to ensure labour migration is safe and fair for women in Vietnam. (Photo: NDO/Trung Hung)

Vulnerabilities can often begin in countries of origin, when women have limited access to the information, skills, financial literacy, and opportunities they would need to be able to engage with fair and regular migration options. “As more women move around ASEAN, we must ensure they are equally able to access regular migration channels, good jobs with higher pay, and the full range of support services,” Dr. Chang stressed.

For that reason, the Safe and Fair project wants to support and address the challenges by investing in women migrant workers to ensure that labour migration is safe and fair for all women in the ASEAN region, he added.

The project will work with partners at local, provincial, national, and regional levels to deliver a better migration experience for women by improving labour migration governance frameworks and services for women migrant workers, reducing the risk of violence and trafficking, and campaigning to generate a better understanding of the contribution of women migrants.

As Vietnam is primarily a country of origin and not a destination for labour migrants, there is also a need at the country level to prioritise the improvement of women’s access to pre-departure information and counseling, as well as working to reduce the risk of violence upon return and making quality, coordinated services available for the women who need them, suggested Elisa Fernandez, Head of the UN Women Office in Vietnam.

The Safe and Fair Programme presents the opportunity for both regional cooperation and country level commitments to improve the situations of women who find themselves vulnerable to violence through labour migration, she stated.

The project will be deployed across the region during 2018-2022, with a six month inception period. Its total budget is EUR25.5 million, of which EUR25 million is funded by the EU and the rest covered by the ILO and UN Women.