Enabling Access to Justice: A CSO Perspective on the Challenges of Realising the Rights of South Asian Migrants in the Middle East
In 2015-2016, the GAATW International Secretariat implemented a project to identify cases in which migrant workers from South Asia who had travelled to the Middle East as temporary labour migrants were trafficked, and to identify the barriers those workers faced accessing justice. A total of thirteen partner organisations from seven countries (Bangladesh, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Nepal and Sri Lanka) participated in the project.
This report captures one area of learning that emerged from the project: the barriers that project partners experience or observe when supporting migrant workers to access justice. It concludes with reflections on the lessons learnt by GAATW about the obstacles to justice for migrant workers, but also for organisations seeking to assist migrant workers and the effort to overcome those barriers. It highlights the complexity of human trafficking, and the many challenges along the road to justice.
See a thirty-minute video with stories of abused or trafficked Nepali migrant women which exemplify some of the difficulties with accessing justice highlighted in the report: