Previous Projects
Each year, UNIFEM Australia supports a UNIFEM Project in a developing country. For information on previously supported projects, please see below.2010 - UNIFEM's Empowering Female Migrant Workers in Indonesia
Background
Globalisation has contributed to an increasing flow of migrant workers from countries with limited economic opportunities to fill gaps in nations with a dwindling labour supply. While globalisation may foster opportunity and the acceleration of trade and investment, it does not create an environment that protects migrant workers' economic, social and physical security. This is even truer when it comes to women migrant workers, whose numbers have been increasing: women now constitute more than half of the migrant workforce in Asia and Latin America.
Over the past two and a half decades, the number of Indonesians working outside the country has continued to rise, with hundreds of thousands formally registered for overseas labour today and more than two million estimated to be illegally residing and working abroad. The majority of these migrant labourers are found in neighbouring Malaysia. Many of these are women working as housemaids and children's nurses, and many others are employed in factories, on construction sites, and in on plantations. Women in Indonesia constitute 70 per cent of the overseas migrant workers, moving both to the Arab States and to countries in East and Southeast Asia such as Hong Kong, Singapore and the Republic of Korea. Indonesian women migrant workers are being recruited into woman-specific skilled and unskilled jobs in the formal and informal economies, but the largest number of women migrant workers are at the lower end of the job hierarchy in domestic work and prostitution where they suffer gross human rights violations. They frequently have to deal with difficult living and working conditions, increased health risks, a lack of access to social services and various forms of abuse such as the confiscation of passports by their employers. Irregular women migrant workers are also particularly vulnerable to harassment, intimidation or threats as well as economic and sexual exploitation including trafficking and racial discrimination. Thousands of Indonesian women, for example, are brought to neighbouring Malaysia to work as prostitutes and are subjected to harsh sexual abuse and exploitation.
UNIFEM and Women Migrant Workers
As part of the 2010 International Women's Day, UNIFEM Australia is funding a project that focuses specifically on empowering women migrant workers in Indonesia. UNIFEM is working on multiple levels to protect women migrants: we work with women before they depart to train them in their rights as workers, employment responsibilities and give them basic information about contracts; we work with women once they arrive in country to ensure they have safe housing, legitimate contracts and workplace rights. We also work with women who are returning to their families after periods away and support them to re-enter their family life.
This project, Empower Women Migrant Workers in Indonesia, is in line with the overall theme of International Women's Day 2010: Empowering Women to End Poverty by 2015. By focusing on women migrant workers, UNIFEM is aiming to address one of the major effects of poverty. Women are migrating independently, as temporary economic migrants, largely as a family survival strategy. While it is true that women have improved their economic situation, women migrant workers in particular, continuously become victims of exploitation, abuse and discrimination as they move for employment abroad. The lack of economic opportunities, coupled with inflation, creates a challenge for women migrant returnees who would like to remain within their communities. However, many of the returnees, due to their social and financial pressures, may decide to re-migrate if economic opportunities in their hometowns are not available or inadequate.
UNIFEM's project to Empower Women Migrant Workers in Indonesia (part of the UNIFEM Asia Pacific and Arab States Regional Program to Empower Women Migrant Workers) has been working in Indonesia since September 2001 with other stakeholders to address some of the key concerns of poor women migrant workers. This project seeks to empower women migrant workers from a gender and rights based development perspective by addressing their concerns and ensuring their rights and recognised and respected.
Project Objectives
- To promote gender-sensitive and rights based laws for migrant workers at local, national and regional levels;
- To strengthen the capacity of key stakeholders such as relevant Government agencies, employers, recruitment agencies, NGO's and migrant associations to protect and empower women migrant workers and to be able to sustain actions to promote the rights of women migrant workers beyond the length of the project; and
- To raise awareness amongst the general public on the positive contribution of women migrant workers and protection of their rights.
Project Successes
Since its inception in 2001, UNIFEM Indonesia has achieved some important advancements towards the empowerment of women migrant workers in the region. Some of the mail achievements of the project over the past eight years are:
- Mainstreamed gender perspectives into the National Law on the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers;
- Mainstreamed women migrants' issues into the government and NGO report (1998 - 2007) for CEDAW, and facilitation the participation of the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration in the mock session to prepare the Ministry and Women's Empowerment and other Ministries to participate in the CEDAW Review process.
- Provided technical assistance between Jordan and Indonesia on protection clauses for women migrants resulting in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries in July 2008.
- Adoption of district legislation to protect migrant workers in the province of Blitar.
- Facilitation the formation and built the capacity of a strong network of ten community-based organisations in three provinces and six districts of Indonesia to address women migrants concerns. These networks have been successful in developing village level sex disaggregated databases on outgoing migrants; implementing community awareness raising and pre-departure orientations for women migrant workers and setting up village information centres for the the dissemination of information on safe migration.
2009 – UNIFEM Pacific’s Market’s Project
The funds raised through International Women’s Day 2009 were directed towards the UNIFEM Pacific Market’s Project. In the Pacific, trading in fresh food markets is the only opportunity for many women to participate in the urban economy. 85% of market vendors are women and 75% come from rural areas. The Markets Project has recently been piloted in Fiji with great success. It aims to improve conditions in rural marketplaces and increase women’s participation in the management of these markets. This project aims to develop new more gender sensitive policies and practices, and encourage a reduction in poverty through increasing household incomes.
2008 – Program for Enhancing Rural Women’s Leadership and Participation in Nation Building in Timor-Leste
The funds raised through International Women’s Day 2008 were directed towards the Program for Enhancing Rural Women’s Leadership and Participation in Nation Building in Timor-Leste (PERWL). Over a number of years, UNIFEM trained potential women candidates across thirteen districts to stand in council elections in Timor-Leste. Altogether, 1,300 women were elected. Funds raised through International Women’s Day 2008 supported a secondary program which built the capacity of these women to be effective leaders in their districts and support them in their roles as councillors. This training included leadership training, gender awareness, formulating gender sensitive policies, gender budgets, accountability to constituencies, as well as public speaking training.
2007 – UNIFEM Pacific’s Capacity Building for Ending Violence Against Women
The funds raised from International Women’s Day 2007 were directed towards UNIFEM Pacific’s program in support of actions taken by Pacific government and non government organisations to Eliminate Violence Against Women. Two capacity building workshops were conducted in Papua New Guinea and Fiji. The workshops included theory and practical sessions on all steps in the process of project formulation, design and documentation for donors to secure funds to eliminate violence against women and to address the link between violence against women and to address the link between violence against women and HIV transmission. The workshop emphasised the importance of quality gender analysis at all stages of the project cycle and a human rights based approach. The two workshops were attended by representatives of thirty-one organisations based in ten Pacific Island countries.
