The December issue of Our Work, Our Lives focuses on Return, Reintegration and Socio-economic Inclusion of women migrant workers. We chose to focus on these themes because they resonate with the work of many GAATW members and partners. Some of our colleagues in South and Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America are currently doing Feminist Participatory Action Research on these topics.
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in its objective 21 places an obligation on states to ‘cooperate in facilitating safe and dignified return and readmission, as well as sustainable reintegration’. Given the fact that many states overtly or covertly violate international human rights laws while ‘returning’ and ‘readmitting’ migrants, objective 21 aims to address an important lacuna. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants’ study on return had pointed out that the so-called ‘voluntary return’ is not genuinely voluntary, preferable as it may be to forced return or expulsion.
Unlike return and reintegration, socio-economic inclusion often does not feature in international documents. At a time when most countries prefer to have temporary migration schemes, perhaps it is assumed that migrants would return to their home countries and reintegrate socially and economically. Yet, ideally, measures for socio-economic inclusion in countries of destination should be put in place, even for temporary migrants.
Every year from 25 November (International Day Against Violence Against Women) to 10 December (International Human Rights Day), thousands of organisations around the world, run the 16 Days Campaign to End Gender Based Violence. Launched in 1991 by the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute, held by the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, the campaign marks its 30th Anniversary this year.
The multi-year campaign theme began in 2018 to end gender-based violence in the world of work continues this year with a special focus on the link between domestic violence and the world of work. In addition, there is a 30th Anniversary theme of femicide or the gender-related killing of women. These themes are timely because there has been a surge in domestic violence and femicide during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and their negative impact on the work, livelihood, and well-being of millions of women is clearly visible.
During this year’s 16 Days campaign, our colleagues at DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) in partnership with the International Network to End Violence Against Women and Girls (INEVAWG) have highlighted the link between gender-based violence and the geopolitical powerplay, corporate domination of international trade, structural inequality between countries, and the on-going vaccine apartheid. Reiterating the data that the external debt of low-income countries has grown by 12% and that more than half of the 453 million people who could be thrown into poverty by 2030 are women, they urge us to look at the macro-economic aspects of GBV.
We bring you the October issue of Our Work, Our Lives today. The theme of this month is Intersecting Struggles: Food, Land & Climate Justice.
We said last month that we would continue with the topic of food in October. We wanted to hear from women farmers. We also wanted to talk to women who work in the food industry – processing, packing, cooking and serving food. October 15 is the International Day of Rural Women, which many of our colleagues celebrate as Women Farmers Day. October 16 is World Food Day. So we thought that it would be interesting to talk to the women food producers and workers our members and partners work with in different parts of the world.
At this moment, human security and international solidarity are at their lowest. Contrary to what some of us had hoped for last year, militarism putting profit before people and the planet have not shown any sign of decline. Despite strong civil society mobilisation, People’s Vaccine is still a distant dream. When we look at this failure of the international community and the rise of hunger and unemployment in so many parts of the world, phrases like ‘leaving no one behind’ and ‘building back better’ sound like empty rhetoric.
Food stories are political. Policies decide who gets to eat what, how much and who makes profit on the backs of food producers. Struggles for food security and sovereignty are also integrally linked with people’s struggles to realise their rights to land, water, forest, safe environment, livelihoods, and health.
Hunger is on the rise, with as many as 811 million people worldwide going to bed hungry every night. Even though small farmers, fishers, and indigenous people produce about 70 percent of the global food supply, they are the ones who experience food insecurity. Six out of ten people who are food insecure are women. In the words of Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, “Hunger, malnutrition and famine are not caused by inadequate amounts of food. They are caused by the political failures that restrict people’s access to adequate food.”
In mid-2020 when we were still sceptical and confused about online work, our colleagues in Indonesia made us feel hopeful. By holding a series of inter-movement dialogues online, they showed us how to push the limits of digital communication. As my colleague Cris and I participated in the strategic conversations via WhatsApp translation while watching the speakers via Zoom, we realised that ingenuity might be the only way forward. Our colleagues from Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India and JALA-PRT in Indonesia inspired us by developing political education handbooks for domestic workers at a time when they were also busy organising emergency support and alternative livelihood for the workers.
By early 2021, we were ready to start online conversations on women, work, and migration with our members and partners located in places with limited and unreliable internet connections. Many of these colleagues work closely with migrant and local women workers in low-wage jobs – the workers hit hardest by the ongoing pandemic. Our discussions led us to talk about women workers’ agendas for change. We also wanted to know if our colleagues facilitate workers’ organising and education.
This is how we began an experimental initiative called Women Workers for Change. It brought together twenty-five GAATW members and partners from Africa, Asia, and Latin America working with women who earn their living from domestic work, sex work, agriculture, weaving, entertainment work, garment sector work, home based work and any available daily wage work. Additionally, most of these women do all the care work for their families. These structured online discussions, which were held between April and July 2021, were an opportunity for mutual learning and strategy sharing. We now notice that those who had not focussed on workers’ organising before felt inspired to do so and want to develop their organising skills. Those who were already self-organised or worker-focussed have begun taking proactive steps towards deepening political education of workers.
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