Nepali women migrant worker in Gulf
Nepali women migrant worker in Gulf
When Asha departed her native Nepal to take a job as a domestic worker in Dubai, she was excited at the prospect of saving money to support herself and her family. Once established in the United Arab Emirates, however, she found herself earning a fraction of what she had been promised. She discovered her low wages were due in part to the fact that the recruitment agency that had facilitated her employment was siphoning off more than a third of her monthly salary.
With financial help from one of her brothers, Asha was able to return to Nepal after more than a year in the UAE. And eventually she did receive a portion of the fee she had paid the recruitment agency to place her abroad. But that was only because she personally confronted the recruiter who had misled her. Accessing justice through more formal channels, whether in Nepal or in the UAE, hadn’t seemed a viable option.
As a study just published by the Open Society Foundations and the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility in Kathmandu, Nepal, documents, Asha’s hunch that any measure of redress she obtained would have to come through informal channels is rooted in an unfortunate reality.
While Nepal has relatively robust laws governing migration, the implementation and enforcement of those protections is weak to nonexistent. With funding from the Open Society International Migration Initiative, a team of researchers conducted a two-year investigation into the mechanisms for redress that exist for migrants who have encountered exploitation before, during, or after working abroad.
The findings were sobering. Of the 43 migrants interviewed who worked in the Gulf, 30 were thrust into conditions different from what was promised to them. Not one was able to access the legal system for restitution, either while they were working in one of the Gulf states or back home in Nepal.
Media attention has focused on the obligation of governments in destination countries to protect migrants’ rights. In one sense, this is warranted: exploitation is rife and there is much more these states can and should do to ensure that men and women working within their borders are treated humanely. But the conditions for abuse are often set during the recruitment phase, in workers’ countries of origin. Governments in countries of origin also need to shoulder responsibility, and provide better oversight of the agencies placing workers abroad.
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