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Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

GAATW Logo

Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women

Human Rights
at home, abroad and on the way...

GAATW News

Feminist Fridays: Conversations about Labour Migration from a Feminist Lens / Viernes feministas: Conversaciones sobre la migración laboral desde una perspectiva feminista

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Abajo en español                  Bahasa Indonesia

Feminist Fridays: Conversations about Labour Migration from a Feminist Lens is a collaborative initiative of Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), Solidarity Center, and Women in Migration Network (WIMN).

During the course of six sessions, we will think through complex issues and build/share knowledge and learn from each other. We will start with a discussion on ‘what is a feminist lens on labour migration’ and will move on to feminist research, advocacy, organising and media. The final session will be on imagining feminist futures on labour migration. Panellists will come from academia, NGOs including migrant worker led organisations, trade unions and media.

Rationale

Labour migration, within and across national borders, is part of the lived experience of many women and men in today’s world. In 2017, ILO estimated that there were 164 million international migrant workers: 96 million men and 68 million women. According to UN/DESA, prior to the onset of COVID-19, the number of international migrants had reached 281 million. This was in line with the upward trend in international migration for over two decades. While most countries do not document labour migration within their national borders, there is enough evidence to conclude that the number of workers who migrate from rural to urban and industrialised areas within their own countries has also been growing over the last few decades. And despite the disruptions created by COVID-19, people continue to move within and across borders.

Alongside the rise in scale, complexity and diversity of migration, it has also been the subject of increased policy interest. The international community has recognised linkages between international migration and development in recent UN instruments, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.

The reality of labour migration, however, tells us that states’ commitments are yet to be realised. A large number of internal and cross-border migrants work in the informal economy and earn very low wages. Many migrant workers are on short or fixed-term contracts and do not have adequate rights protection. It needs to be noted that the steady rise in labour migration is taking place alongside global trends of falling labour force participation, decent work deficits and rising unemployment that has been exacerbated in the last year due to the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. Indeed, the precarity of migrant workers is integrally linked to the pattern of capitalist development, and social-structural conditions in which the production and social reproduction of labour take place. More than a year into the pandemic, the crisis in the world of work is a stark reminder that the current models of development have failed a large number of people, depleted natural resources and caused harm to the eco-system. If the current economic regime and development paradigm continue, exploitative labour schemes will also continue, despite the promises made in the international instruments.

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A Woman's Place is in the Resistance

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We are celebrating International Women’s Day in the midst of a deadly pandemic and major threats to human rights and freedom. For every one of these challenges, women have been at the forefront of the resistance.

From the ‘Wall of Moms’ in Portland, USA protesting against racial injustice and police brutality, to the ‘Women in White’ of Belarus demanding free and fair elections; from the demonstrations against the coup in Myanmar and for democratic reforms in Thailand to those to #EndSars in Nigeria; from the movements for a new constitution in Chile and for legal abortion in Argentina to those against the Citizenship Act and the Farmer’s Bill in India, women are showing that they will no longer put up with violence, injustice, oppression and despotism.

The original revolutionary goals of International Women’s Day – from over 100 years ago – remain relevant today. COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on low-wage workers, informal workers and health care workers, many of whom are women and migrants. Women have absorbed the economic and psychological cost of the pandemic through increased unpaid working hours and care work. Much of this labour is unrecognised. Women's full and effective participation and decision-making in public life is necessary to center these struggles and bring about social and economic justice.

Throughout the pandemic, women have shown that they can lead through empathic communication, anticipatory policy making and building resilience of communities. It is fitting then that this year’s IWD theme is Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world”. We salute our feminist sisters who lead in big and small ways: at home, in communities, at the national level and in the international arena. We are in solidarity with women who struggle to realise their fundamental rights to access to water, forest, land, food security, healthcare, education and decent work.                                                                                            

Twenty-seven members and partners of GAATW are celebrating IWD 2021 with the launch of a campaign entitled Women Workers for Change. The campaign starts with the premise that all women are workers, regardless of the work they do and whether or not they are paid for it. The broad frame of the campaign will include a number of specific local change agendas identified by women workers. As the campaigns progress, our colleagues from Asia, Africa and Latin America will share their strategies, challenges, and successes with each other. All through the year, we will bring you stories of this collective learning process.

 

The IMF Must Immediately Stop Promoting Austerity Around the World

More than five hundred of the world’s leading charities, social groups and academics have sent a letter to the International Monetary Fund warning that its support programs, which have had to be ramped up to cope with COVID-19, were condemning many countries to years of austerity.

We, the undersigned, call on the IMF to immediately stop promoting austerity around the world, and instead advocate policies that advance gender justice, reduce inequality, and decisively put people and planet first.

As those who care about governments’ ability to fulfil human rights and advance progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, we express the utmost alarm at the IMF’s advice for countries to return to austerity once the current crisis recedes. This pandemic has laid bare the deadly repercussions of systematically weak investments in health, education and social protection, hardest felt by marginalized populations including women, older people, racial and ethnic minorities, informal workers and low-income families. This crisis has also shone light on the shrinking of the middle classes and worsening gap between rich and poor.

The IMF has spoken repeatedly of the need for a fair and green recovery. It has said that economic and gender inequality, climate change, and poor governance can weaken growth and undermine stability. In recent years, it developed operational guidance for staff on embedding gender and economic inequality analysis into its work and approved a macroeconomic framework for social spending. All of this would suggest that the IMF is ready to use its influence and authority to support countries in reducing inequality.

And yet, despite this rhetoric and its own warnings of deepening inequalitythe IMF has already started locking countries into new long-term austerity-conditioned loan programs in the past few months. Beyond the conditionality in these recent programs, we note that a significant number of the IMF’s COVID-19 emergency financing packages contain language promoting fiscal consolidation in the recovery phase. And with governments struggling to pay increased debt servicing and expected to continue to need extraordinary levels of external financing for years to come, IMF loan programs — and the conditions that accompany them — will play a highly influential role in shaping the economic and social landscape in the aftermath of this pandemic.

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Global Call for Translators and Interpreters

Deadline: n/a. This is an ongoing call to roster

The International Secretariat of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW-IS) is inviting translators and interpreters to roster their services for short term assignments.

1. About the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW)

The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) is an Alliance of more than 80 non-governmental organisations from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. The Alliance promotes and defends the human rights of all migrants and their families against the background of an increasingly globalised labour market.

GAATW sees the phenomenon of human trafficking intrinsically embedded in the context of migration for the purpose of labour and calls for safety standards for migrant workers in the process of migration, and in the formal and informal work sectors - garment and food processing, agriculture and farming, domestic work, sex work - where slavery-like conditions and practices exist.

GAATW prioritises the value of experiential knowledge and the role that community-based organisations and women themselves can play in creating new knowledge about and fresh insights into issues affecting women’s lives, including migration and work. Such feminist knowledge is crucial in evaluating the effectiveness of existing labour migration regimes, and advocating for labour migration and anti-trafficking policies that protect the rights of women.

2. About the Call

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the inequities, injustices and discriminations that different groups of women face all over the world. Even among civil society organisations who are working to address these inequalities, we have seen how the digital divide continues to hinder equal opportunities for participation and access. With the restrictions on travel, civil society groups, community organisers and women activists from the Global South have been unable to equally participate, share and contribute to online events, which still mainly cater to English-speaking audiences.

Like many other organisations, GAATW has moved its meetings and discussions to an online format. And while English remains the common language within the Alliance, we are seeking to provide more opportunities for diverse participation in our activities.

Keeping this objective in mind, we are inviting people with dual (or more) language skills to register their interest for translation and interpretation assignments.

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The COVID-19 Crisis is a Wake-up Call to Rethink the World of Work

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Statement by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women on the occasion of International Workers' Day

This year we are celebrating International Workers’ Day in the midst of a global pandemic. A virus ten-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter has turned everyone’s lives upside down. At the time of writing, the novel corona virus or COVID-19, as it has come to be known, has claimed almost 230,000 lives and infected more than 3 million people. The number is still growing, healthcare systems are struggling to cope with the impact and an economic recession is just round the corner. The pandemic has rendered billions of people jobless, homeless and without food security. According to an ILO estimate, full or partial lockdown measures affect almost 2.7 billion workers, representing around 81 per cent of the world’s workforce.

As we grapple with the evolving situation, a few things are clear: this virus has exposed the stark inequalities in our societies and the abysmal scenario in the world of work. It is clear, if ever there was any doubt, that most governments have prioritised profit over people. It is perhaps not surprising that discrimination and structural violence towards care workers, migrants in low-paid jobs and workers in the informal economy are seen even in the COVID-19 containment measures. Indeed, the lingering images over the last several weeks are of the exodus of migrant workers from cities under lockdown, stranded workers huddled up in makeshift accommodations queuing up for food, workers harassed by law enforcement, women facing violence in their homes and farmers with their wasted harvest and unsold produce.

Women, the Unpaid Care Workers

On this May Day we renew our solidarity with the unpaid care workers, most of whom are women. Many of whom are also in paid jobs. While COVID-19 has closed avenues for paid work for many women, there has been a huge increase in their unpaid care work burden. Before COVID-19, women were doing three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men. Now with children out of school, men out of work, paid care workers not allowed into homes and heightened care needs of older persons, that burden has increased multifold for women across classes and countries. To make matters worse, there are reports of steady rise in domestic violence and child abuse during the lockdown. Confined within their homes, women have lost their peer support and many state and NGO- run shelters are now closed.

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