Each year, hundreds of thousands of Asian (and increasingly African) women migrate to become a domestic worker in Gulf countries to make a living for their families. About one in three female wage workers in the Middle East (31.8 %) is a domestic worker.

Unfortunately for many though, their journey is full of deception, abuse and isolation. The poor working conditions, physical and sexual abuse, bonded labour and human trafficking they are subject to have been well reported.

Shelter Me aims to break the isolation of migrant domestic workers, reform recruitment, change the behavior of employers, and make governments in countries of origin act responsibly. We also want to challenge the perception of migrant domestic workers as commodities, both in their home and host countries.

More than 80 per cent of migrant domestic workers in the Middle East come from Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, which are all too familiar with the terrible working conditions their citizens endure. Some have even placed a moratorium on migration of their domestic workers to the GCC. However, such measures generally lead to more irregular migration and human trafficking.

The new flow of migrant labour is from Africa. In July 2015, Uganda signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to send them one million migrant domestic workers for wages as low as $200 per month. This agreement was overturned six months later after claims of abuse emerged, but it points to what can happen in African countries with little experience in labor migration outside of the continent and without mechanisms for safe migration, ethical recruitment and proper pre-departure orientation.

Shelter Me wants instead to make recruitment more transparent and fair, and change the perceptions of domestic workers among employers, so that these women can migrate safely to seek work, be treated well and receive a decent wage for their work. But these interventions can only take root in an environment where there is a positive narrative about migrant domestic workers. So Shelter Me also conducts campaigns to create an enabling environment and change the narrative on migrant domestic workers both in sending and receiving countries.

The programme engages non-traditional stakeholders, such as businesses and embassies, to reach out to as many employers as possible and thus indirectly bring positive changes to the situation of domestic workers. As part of our multi-stakeholder approach, we target recruitment agents directly or indirectly (depending on the context) to make the sector more transparent and fair, and we positively influence their practices on the ground through training sessions and hands-on tools.

The project will in the end also be a source of tools and learning on how migration can turn into a success for these women. Some of these are:

• Shelter Me’s successful Help Desk for migrant domestic workers at Jakarta International Airport.
• Shelter Me’s scorecard on recruitment malpractices among migrant domestic workers is used to make the Indonesian government provide direct assistance to its citizens and to hold governments accountable for enforcing recruitment regulations and strengthening protections for migrant domestic workers.
• The Shelter Me ‘Employers’ Guide’ with advice and guidelines to formalise the work relationship with domestic workers based on human rights and ILO decent work standards. This guide is distributed to businesses and international organizations, among others, in the Gulf region.

Consortium

Shelter Me is an initiative of Hivos, Migrant-Rights.org and Migrant CARE, working with a broad network of local organisations, INGO’s and NGO’s in East Africa and Southeast Asia. Hivos’ expertise in developing multi-stakeholder programs and linking international players in the filed, combined with our partners’ varied expertise on migrants’ issues, makes this initiative unique. It is one of the first of its kind to work in the Gulf region with partners from both countries of origin and destination, targeting employers and domestic workers.

Migrant-Rights.org (MR) is the Middle East’s foremost platform dedicated to advancing migrant worker rights. It produces resources for citizens, academics, media, local civil society organizations, as well as migrants. Migrant CARE defends the rights of migrant workers by exerting pressure on the Indonesian government to better protect migrants and to lobby for improved national and international regulations.

https://www.hivos.org/focal-area/shelter-me