The streets of Banda Aceh are lined with big banners announcing the Pekan Nasional Petani Nelayan, or the National Summit on Farming and Fisheries on May 16 to 13. Running for almost 50 years now, the biannual Summit has been one of main platforms for exchange of farming and fishing practices and technology among farmers, fisherfolk, academics, the private sector and the government.
Banda Aceh is proud to host the summit this year and showcase one of its well-funded fishing infrastructure project: the Lampulo International Harbor. Just this year the Aceh provincial government earmarked 140 billion rupiah (est. US $10M) for this project. The Lampulo fishport was one of the biggest in Aceh province until it was damaged by the tsunami in 2004. The Aceh provincial and regional governments want to upgrade the port to support international trade and host large fishing vessels in the Indian Ocean. The masterplan includes a pier for large fishing vessels, docks for small and local fishing boats, housing complex for fishermen and their families, industrial zone for fish processing, and a solar farm to power the 131-hectare port complex. The port opened in 2014 and the government hopes to complete the project by 2019. Talking to people, I learned about various projects of the government for women in the fishing sector. In Ikan Kayu Cap Kapal Tsunami is a local brand of dried fish produced in this village. The brand and product is owned, managed, and made by women in the village. They sell to markets in Banda Aceh and to the fishing boats docked in the port. But their biggest customer is the government. The government buys their product and sells is to Mecca and to Indonesians performing the Hajj. They will put up an exhibit and sell their products in the summit. Women of the Ikan Kayu look forward to more trade as Banda Aceh opens up to international markets. The Lampulo project is just one of the post-tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction projects of the government. Sadly, some of these projects had not been helpful. For example, a lot of money was poured in building fishponds. The government utilized imported technology and hired non-Acehnese workers who do not know the local landscape. As a result, water levels in these fishponds were not sufficient and fisherfolk eventually abandoned them. Other ponds suffered from high chemical contamination which has resulted in lower productivity and environmental degradation. The government tried to address these problems and initiated projects to support the growing fishing sector. The provincial government re-appropriated some of these fishponds and has been running a training and technology transfer program. They cover 50 hectares of pond area in Northern Aceh alone and hope to expand to other districts. One of such programs supports women in oyster farming. Men in the fishing sector in Aceh go out to the sea to catch baby tuna or weave and rent basket containers at the port. Women collect or farm oysters and sell them along the main streets of Banda Aceh. About 90% of rural women in Aceh are into oyster farming. I met Kartini, 39 years old, in Lamnga village, just 14 kilometers east of Lampulo Harbor. Kartini raises her 14-year old son with the money she earns from oyster farming. She participated in the government trainings for oyster farmers, and received oyster seeds, a maturation tank and a 3-meter wide fish pond. She gives 5000rp to the middle person who collects oysters from the village and sells to restaurants or bigger buyers and takes home 40,000rp per day. She said business has improved after the tsunami because of the government support. She looks forward to better income but fears the competition from the oyster vendors a few meters from her pond. These vendors did not participate in government trainings and they do not own fish ponds. They gather oysters from common areas or abandoned plots. They sell better because customers think their catch is fresh. Unlike Kartini, they have direct contact with customers. Ibu Cutpo, an oyster vendor, said she earns 150,000rp a day from selling oysters and sea shells. Unlike women from Kampung Lampulo, Kartini and Ibu Cutpo have not heard of the national summit nor do they wish to participate. They do not belong to any community organization and they said only men in their village have associations. They do not have information about any other government programs and they lack the network that they think they need in order to earn more. Both of them aspires to expand their business. They said money is important to women because if they have money they feel they have more independence. Hearing these stories from women in different fishing villages in Banda Aceh made me think about the challenges of uneven development. Even within the city, access and results of development vary as government shift priorities. Certainly I hope to see Banda Aceh create more opportunities for many women across sectors, especially as it aspires to be an international maritime trading hub in region.
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I have encountered many people from various communities having different opinions about women’s empowerment as I travel around for GIST. Because my inquiry is largely about women’s rights I often find myself engaged in numerous conversations about domestic violence, discrimination against women, multiple burden, and the many issues that plague women all over the world. These encounters had been a great source of learning and inspiration, but some of disappointment and frustration. What saddens me greatly is this phrase I hear of “including men in gender equality” almost always spoken in the same breath as “not including men in women’s meetings and conferences”.
I find these comments unproductive because it creates animosity towards the efforts of many organizations and individual women and men alike to create multiple spaces for dialog. I would like to emphasize multiple spaces. I believe that the more safe spaces we have for authentic dialog, co-creation, understanding of oneself and one’s collective the closer we get to gender equality. This blog is one window. GIST 2017 is another. There’s many more out there. Women’s meetings and conferences are but one part of the great work for gender equality, and the most successful ones are grounded in hard work. What I find helpful is to create more spaces in all community circles of women, men, LGBT persons that enables deep learning and reflection on gender. How might each of us contribute in eliminating inequality and achieve gender equality? How do we begin talking about gender to our children, within our families, peers, circles of friends, colleagues at work? Traveling through GIST, I have seen examples of efforts to create opportunities for people and communities to engage in gender equality. For example, last month I visited India with fellow GISTers and two colleagues from the EWC to learn about Parinaama’s work. Parinaama is a non-profit, non-government organization working with women and girls in the poorest villages of West Odisha. Women and girls that Parinaama works with shared stories of violence against women, being prohibited to go to school or to leave their houses simply because they are women, barriers to making decisions about their future, being forced or pressured by their families to marry. It seemed that most of them have a deep yearning for independence, whether that means earning their own money or deciding about their roles in their households. And then I went to New Delhi to give support to a friend and founder of FACE India, fellow G16 and pioneering member of the APLP Women and Gender Affinity Group in his pre-launch of a women’s empowerment program engaging the art community in India. Women shared about what they had to go through to establish themselves as visual artists in India’s capital: lack of access to formal training because art schools are not prepared to accept women in their programs, being rejected and disowned by their fathers, lack of social support to pursue their career because of stereotype that women cannot be artists. The Pre-Launch highlighted the lack of conversation on the issue and the challenges of starting one in the art community in New Delhi. Traveling across Indonesia, I have learned about gender issues mostly in fishing villages. I have attempted in my previous blogs to share about their issues, the current efforts to address them, and how I have greatly learned from interacting with advocates, NGOs and grassroots communities. For me these stories illustrate how strikingly similar women’s narratives of vulnerability, exclusion, and discrimination are across many communities. They indicate conditions of vulnerability and exclusion faced by women whether they belong to poorer communities or are more economically able and whether they live in a city or in rural area, over the course of their lifetime. And I also heard stories of hope, of how women and organizations work to overcome barriers to gender equality in the communities they live in and serve. The question of including who in what work, I believe, should bring one to reflect on questions about who is missing and what might be the reasons for it; of questions about what it takes to invite others who may be less aware of gender and women’s empowerment issues to see relevance not just in their personal lives but in their communities. Instead of judging women’s spaces as outright exclusive, we can, for example, encourage men to organize among their ranks and to create their own spaces of learning and dialog about violence in intimate relationships, women’s rights, patriarchy, and expressions of gender equality. I invite you to think of more ways to enable engagement. I want to put out these observations and I hope readers will take this an invitation for discussion, deeper learning and engagement on women’s empowerment and gender equality in all places that we visit. I would be glad to hear about and learn from your experiences too. Learning from the Bajo: Reflections from visiting the Bajo village in Pulau Nain, Northern Sulawesi4/25/2017 I visited Kampung Nain, a fishing village two hours away by boat from Manado, the largest city in Northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Perhaps the village is more known by outsiders as the Bajo village or the village of the sea gypsies living in the northernmost part of Indonesia. They were labeled as “sea gypsies” because of their purported itinerant lifestyle, ever living in the seas, never settling for land. What I found among the people of Bajo village was something in between living on land and in the sea, but that is a topic for another time. What I will highlight here are reflections on the ways that I tried to learn about the Bajo and their community. I conducted the fieldwork with my own methodological biases and assumptions. First, my bias is qualitative inquiry, favoring participatory-action methods, relying on feminist principles of interviewing. In practical terms this means privileging the voice of the participants in my conversations, enabling their participation at various levels in the course of my visit, verifying (or triangulating) information. However, I am not an academic, nor am I approaching this inquiry as an activist might. I did this inquiry out of my own curiosity and desire to learn about the Bajo. But how do I learn about them? The best way, as it turned out for me is to learn from them. First is the language. I would have to be able to communicate in Bahasa Indonesia. This is clearly a barrier but this also presented an opportunity for me to build rapport and frame my questions in the simplest way possible. I tried to get help from translators in Manado. But I couldn’t find someone who willing to stay with me in the island for ten days. Going back and forth was not an option because the boat to Manado arrives and leaves only once a day. The boat ride takes two hours and the weather is harsh; and I couldn’t afford it. An alternative presented itself through a man named Eben, a school teacher recently assigned to the island. He teaches English and is known as the only person on the island who can speak English. He is not Bajo. People in the village calls him a Sanger, a tribe living in an island 2 days away from Pulau Nain. With his help, I managed to talk to some of the leaders in the community. However, the translation is not effective because he did not understand my objectives in having these conversations. So I let him lead the conversations and eventually I realized that there is a lot of value in letting these conversations develop among the people in the village. This made me think again about the power differences between me as an “outsider” or “visitor” and Eben as “my” translator, and among the people of the village as subjects of the inquiry. Most of the time I relied on Dimas, a 10 year-old boy, and Indy, a 15 year-old girl who accompanied me throughout my stay. They do not speak English so we worked with a dictionary. I asked them about the words I heard in the conversations. Dimas and Indy helped explain my questions and the responses of the villagers. It was difficult work and I believe many have been interpreted or misunderstood. But as with Eben, I valued the opportunities to work with children on conducting this inquiry. By working with them I also learned basic Bahasa Indonesia and was able to carry out daily transactions and simple conversations. Trying to learn and speaking to them in Bahasa Indonesia proved to be the more powerful and meaningful source of learning for me. I sought out women leaders in the community. This was challenging. At one point I felt that the word I used for “woman-leader,” pemimpin, did not capture my ideas of the leader and leadership I was looking for. Or it could simply have been that the first thing people thought of when asked about the leader is the officer or person of official authority. In the end, I was unable to find another word for ‘leader’ or ‘leadership.’ I found a way around this barrier by trying to talk to women based on their roles in the community, guided by my assumptions about the power attached to these roles: village officials, store owners, the oldest woman in the village, school heads, heath care providers, etc. Most conversations happened more than once. I had the opportunity to talk to women again and attempt to clarify. I was also able to verify information from one interview to another by asking the next person about what I had recently gathered. The challenges are great given my limited command of Bahasa Indonesia. I always felt apologetic for not learning it before going to the island. Another instrument I used, aside from the language, is technology. I taught people how to use a DSLR camera by asking them to take pictures of me while interviewing or pictures of their friends or neighbors. Children were quick to show interest. So I asked them to take photos of things they like or of things that they find interesting. I also let them learn how to use the laptop. They were interested in watching the Korean drama I had saved on the computer, so I taught them how to play videos. They learned quickly. On the fourth day of my stay on the island, the adults told me not to give the kids so much access to these things. I imagine the kids were also scolded. Indy later on told me that it’s because the adults were afraid that the children will damage these gadgets. I lived with a family for ten days. I had the opportunity to observe them in their home. As my host family, they felt responsible for me and my whereabouts and who I spoke with. They wanted to know my needs and they tried to meet them. They provided me with care and protection. There were moments when I decided against pursuing certain interests (such as understanding the arisan, or money market, in the village) because the host family saw it negatively and I felt I had to honor their opinions. At times I also felt like I was imposing on them because I always had to go with someone—and mostly it was Dimas or Indy and when the kids are not available they try to find someone from the extended family. My host family also felt they need to protect me from the prying eyes and lusty desires of boys and men in the village, and for that I am grateful. Violence, particularly sexual violence, is a threat to women anywhere in the world. But my being new to the village and unable to speak the language makes me, in their eyes, more accessible. My inquiry in the Bajo village made me think more about the moments when I find people in the community exercise direct influence on my agenda—in terms of who I can talk with, what I can ask about, the clarifications I get, and how I document the work. I have become more aware of the inherent power of the person framing and asking the questions, of the compromises and negotiations that occur between the host family and the guest, the challenges of finding words in another language that can convey an idea, the sensitivities needed to recognize women’s agency, and how observation is key to understanding. All of these are valuable learnings that I hope I can carry forward as I continue to learn from the communities I will visit in the future. At least 20 Indonesian fishermen died from 2000-2016 because of slavery at sea—or the severe working conditions at fishing vessels without legal protection and basic welfare for workers. Slavery in foreign fishing vessels and trafficking of fishermen is a complex problem. What are the current strategies to address this problem?
Provide legal services The Indonesian Fishermen Association (IFA), a non-government organization providing legal services based in Tegal, Central Java handles at least 50 legal cases a week. Most of these cases are about unpaid salary of Indonesian workers in foreign fishing vessels. Workers in foreign fishing vessels can have a contract with the recruitment agency or with the ship captain or both. The conditions and manner of receiving salary are stipulated in this contract. Sometimes fishermen are asked to sign under duress or in situations where they cannot make an informed decision. Only about 20% of the cases are successful. Meaning to say, that the fisherman or his family is able to take the salary he is entitled to. There are many barriers to success. One is the sheer number of recruitment agencies in Central Java alone. Only 8 out of 100 recruitment agencies have proper certification from the government. There are many moonlight agencies so when the cases were filed the courts cannot locate them anymore. In most instances they change the name of the agency to avoid law enforcement. Another barrier is the lack of lawyers to provide legal support. In more severe cases, life of the NGO worker is threatened by private entities whose interests are damaged by exposing the grave conditions of Indonesian fishermen. Make policies that protect the rights of fisher folk and workers at foreign fishing vessels NGOs such as the IFA demands for government’s accountability to Indonesian fishermen. They demand that the Indonesian government ratify ILO Convention 188 also called Work in Fishing Convention which provides for the minimum labor protection for workers in fisheries sector. Indonesia has ratified the Convention of Migrant Workers (CMW) and is therefore legally-bound to protect the rights of Indonesians abroad. There are efforts to recognize workers in foreign fishing vessels as migrant workers and are therefore entitled to rights and protection guaranteed by CMW. Indonesian government can enter into bilateral agreements that strengthen mechanisms for redress and monitoring abuses against fishing workers. Build awareness, organize communities and expand networks Exposing the issue to the public remains to be a powerful way to get governments to take notice and address the problem. Since Tempo, media outfit based in Jakarta, has covered the issue of slavery at sea, and when the Benjina case was exposed in 2015, there had been several discussions among government ministries about the issue. However, this must be sustained by organizing and building a critical mass of citizens that will follow the issue and seek accountability and better response. According to IFA, service providers, harbor patrol officers, and academics illegal recruitment and trafficking have become a common practice in villages in Central Java. It is a continuing effort to shape a critical awareness of human rights, laws and policies as well as enable collective action in fishing villages and local communities. Expanding networks abroad is also one strategy. Early this March there was a strategic partnership meeting between the fishermen network in Tegal and Taiwanese media and NGO counterparts. These efforts should be enabled as institutions (NGOs, government, etc) must work with foreign counterparts in solving the issue. Invest in documentation There are no official data or information how many Indonesians are fishing abroad or are aboard foreign fishing vessels. Survivors, escapees or returnees estimates that more than 80% are illegal fishermen in the vessels where they were employed. There are no seamen books and the documents are fake. Recruitment agencies facilitate access to these fake documents. Government officers estimate that there are around 40,000 illegal as against the legal Indonesian fishermen aboard foreign fishing vessels. The government does not know where they are nor are there any known programs so far addressing the issue. Time, money, information network and technology are the resources that one needs to investigate cases such as slavery at sea and human trafficking. It takes time to build a case and gather evidences. Money is needed to go from one location to another which could be quite expensive given the transborder nature of these problems. One needs to infiltrate the information network or identify critical nodes of information is such a porous and dynamic network of households and families, recruiters, vessel owners, and placement agencies, and law enforcement officers. It is particularly challenging in Indonesia because its coastal borders are long and there are many entry and exit points. Technology is available to track fishing vessels anywhere in the world. But these are not accessible to governments, NGOs, grassroots organizations, and even the academe. Partnerships that enable access to these or development of one’s own technology to facilitate documentation of cases is also needed. These four strategies are interrelated and should be part of a comprehensive plan to address human trafficking and slavery. Communities, NGOs, governments, private sector, media and the academe should demonstrate sustained commitment to eliminate various forms of abuses and exploitation against fisher folks. The lack of sex- and age-disaggregated data has long been a hindrance to ascertaining the conditions of Indonesian women and how they are impacted by development initiatives and government policies, and to providing recommendations to improve women’s lives and guarantee fulfilment of their human rights. Households are the dominant unit of analysis, which assumes that male and female members of the household share equal control and decision-making power over household resources. This situation holds true when trying to analyze women’s condition in the fisheries sector. Indonesia’s fisheries sector can be divided into four interrelated sub-sectors: aquaculture, salt farming, capture fishing, and ecosystem conservation. Though they work in all subsectors, women’s roles and contributions are hardly recognized. Many factors contribute to the marginalization of Indonesian women in the fisheries sector but one consequence is that women continue to be excluded from policy and program interventions to improve lives and livelihood of fisherfolk in Indonesia. Laws fail to articulate women as fisherfolk or the multiple discriminations women face because of their intersecting identities based on gender, age, class, and ethnicity. While efforts of women and human rights advocacy groups have mainstreamed the concept of discrimination against women, there is no visible appreciation by government policymakers or implementing bodies of women’s experiences and vulnerabilities in male-dominated fishing communities and the overall fisheries sector. Recognition, Access, and Control over Resources It is rare in Indonesia for women to be formally recognized as fisherfolk, despite women’s significant contributions in pre- and post-harvest and also in fish capture. Government and communities do not regard women as fishers. In the years of KIARA’s work, among the hundreds of thousands of registered fishermen all over Indonesia, KIARA only met two women with fisherfolk identity cards. KIARA, or People’s Coalition for Fisheries Justice is a non-government organization committed to the protection and welfare of fishers and their communities. The government estimates that Indonesia has more than three million fishers out of the total population of 250 million. The identity card facilitates access to capital, training, insurance, and other government programs particularly for fisherfolk. It is also needed for acquiring land and property titles. Not having these identity cards mean women are excluded from services, credit and capital, and property ownership. The Law for the Protection and Empowerment of Fisherfolk recently passed by Congress only mentions perempuan (women) in relation to domestic chores or household duties. The law does not recognize the roles or contributions, and therefore rights and entitlements, of women in the fishing sector. The law reinforces stereotypes of women and devalues household work and women’s contributions to the community and economy. Recently, the government banned the use of cantrang (fish nets). This has adversely affected the livelihood of small scale fisherfolk and may disproportionately impact women, who work in shrimp farms in coastal communities across Indonesia. More data is needed. Even within fishing communities, women are hardly recognized as fishers. Man is for the sea as woman is for the land. It is difficult to overcome this stereotype and it leads to exclusion of and barriers to participation for women fishers in community and local governance activities. Threats from privatization, tourism, and mining projects Privatization, tourism, and mining projects have profound impacts on women in affected communities—including the loss of traditional food sources, water access, and other resources essential to women’s livelihoods. These projects have particularly affected small-scale fishers, who, according to the government, make up 95 percent of Indonesia’s fishing fleet. Privatization of land and water is increasing in Indonesia. Perhaps one of the most visible and controversial examples is the reclamation project that aims to build 17 islands off the coast of Jakarta. These projects have displaced small-scale fisherfolk and prevented access to fishing waters within 12 nautical miles of the coastal zone. Fishers risk arrest and detention for ‘encroaching’ on previously open fishing waters. In other regions of Indonesia, local governments allegedly have entered into the business of selling off islands and coastlines to private corporations that converts them to luxurious and private resorts. These are labeled tourism projects, in line with Indonesia’s aspirations to be a tourist hub in Southeast Asia and the world. Whole fishing and coastal communities are displaced by these projects. Another trend is the increase of undersea mining projects that extract gold among other precious minerals off Indonesian seafloor. Local governments and mining companies enter into agreement to provide armed military protection for these mining projects. There have been cases of murder and mysterious deaths of community leaders who have fought against these projects. Violence against women in the fishing sector and fishing communities Trafficking of women There are distinct modes for trafficking men and women from fishing villages. Men are often trafficked to work into longline fishing vessels. There are several cases of young men, especially in Sulawesi, who are deceived by recruitment agencies into working on foreign-owned fishing vessels, where the young men face harsh working and living conditions and the risk death in the open sea. Women are generally trafficked to industries other than the fishing industry. As fish harvests diminish due to negative effects of climate change and communities are displaced by tourism and mining projects, women are pushed to find work elsewhere. Ironically perhaps, some of them end up in fish processing factories in West and Central Java. The vast majority probably end up in overseas domestic work where the risks of exploitation and abuse are highly documented. Domestic violence and multiple burdens Because work and food have become scarce in rural communities, men go to urban centers, usually Jakarta, for opportunities to work at the ports and piers. They become fishermen or coolies in Jakarta’s big port. But for them to get to Jakarta, they need money for transportation and at least a month’s worth of food allowance. In many cases women are pressured to provide money to pay for their husband’s transportation, living allowance, and placement for work in Jakarta. This leads to intense arguments between men and women, which often end in physical abuse against women. Women eventually borrow money from loan sharks. While the husband is away, women have find the means to support the family and pay their debts to the loan shark. Because working and living conditions on the piers and open sea are dire, men are unable to send money regularly. Some can only send money every three or six months. Others take a year. Women have to support themselves and their children and deal with harassment from debt collectors. Some women engage in capture fishing, others bargain in fish auctions and trade fish for vegetables or other goods. Many women have multiple jobs. Because women are deterred from acquiring fisherfolk identity cards, they cannot access services from the government. Women whose husbands end up working in foreign-owned fishing vessels serve as collateral for any potential ‘breach’ of contract. Some of the work contracts come with a provision that if the worker goes missing for whatever reason, his wife should pay the amount equal to transportation expenses plus a penalty charge. There have been cases where women in Central Java have had to pay more than 10million rupiah (approx. US $750) to the company when their husbands went missing. Reproductive and Sexual Health Rights Women’s access to reproductive and sexual health services in Indonesia is generally weak. There is stigma in acquiring modern methods of birth control (e.g. condoms, emergency contraception, pills). Pharmacies are reluctant to sell them to women. Most health providers ask women who want to purchase modern methods whether they are married, and some even require the presence of women’s male partners during consultations and check-ups. Abortion is discouraged and often sanctioned; access to doctors who conduct the procedure is rare. One has to be referred by a trusted source. It is very confidential and dangerous both for the doctor and the patient. Access to such services is even more limited in rural and coastal communities. Cases of HIV are rising, especially among young men in Indonesia. Women are commonly infected by their male partners. There are likely many cases in fishing villages because fisherfolk are more mobile. For example, men can be infected while they are out of the village, and when they return, unknowingly transmit the infection to their wives. Because there is stigma in HIV testing, men and women tend to avoid health services. There is little data about this as both service provision and research are weak. It has been more than three decades since the Indonesian government ratified CEDAW or the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, thereby submitting itself to legally-binding commitments to protect, promote, and fulfill women’s human rights. Compliance with the law has remained at the de jure level as there are structural barriers to the full enjoyment by Indonesian women of their human rights. Laws protecting women from domestic violence and trafficking are significant steps towards achieving non-discrimination and equality. Previous governments have declared commitments to mainstreaming gender and development across all government agency programs and budget allocations. However, there are no enabling laws to protect and promote the rights of marginalized women, particularly of women in the fishing sector. Further, discriminatory laws persist in local governments, reinforcing stereotypes about women’s roles and identities. Enjoyment of universal human rights must take into account the needs and conditions of women living under distinct conditions and cultures. Surfacing women’s voices, subjectivities, and perspectives, and documenting women’s intersecting and compounded experiences of discrimination, is critical in that interventions are appropriately designed so that women in fisheries gain equal ownership and control of resources, live free from violence, and pursue their empowerment and that of their communities. This article is a work-in-progress. Contact me for any comments or suggestions. Thank you to Koalisi Rakyat untuk Keadilan Perikanan (KIARA) for sharing their research and cases, to Kesatuan Nelayan Tradisional Indonesia (KNTI) and Solidaritas Perempuan for sharing their data and insights. Thank you Gretchen for editing. Migration has always been integral in the history of humanity. People move for many and varied reasons rooted in social, economic and political milieu of that specific era. In last 50 years, people’s mobility is linked to globalization: relationships of labor demand and supply, integrated transport and communication systems, advances in technology, emergence of transnational networks, and growing inequalities.
Policy and discourse on people’s migration tend to focus on three types of ‘movement’: labor migration, political migration, and displacement. One might say that the most dominant of these is labor migration or movement of people in relation to perceived and actual opportunities for income generating work outside of their communities and countries of origin. The other type of regulated movement is that of securing life and liberty of a person such as those persecuted in their communities of origin because of ideology and other political difference. They are granted asylum status by a welcoming State. Similar to labor migration, governments have made commitment to grant asylum seekers safety of passage and conduct of daily life in host communities. Lastly, what has also emerged in recent decades is the massive movement of communities because of disasters and emergency situations including armed conflict. This movement is referred to as ‘displacement’. International norms and standards mainly for humanitarian response and reintegration of displaced populations are put in place. States grant refugee status and provide a range of protection including temporary shelter to more permanent access to work and livelihood in host communities. What has been on the periphery of discourse is the type of movement that is perhaps more ‘personal’, such as marriage migration (which is somehow used interchangeably with international marriages, multicultural marriages), and the movement of peoples and communities perceived to have lived ‘nomadic’ and ‘traditional’ lifestyles and moved along fluid and shared borders. There are two key paradigms from which nation-states and civil society try to address and frame the challenges that inherently accompanies movement of people: human rights and development. The human rights movement have gained headway in international advocacy for the rights of migrant workers and their families. Governments and the UN have agreed on the legally binding Convention of Migrant Workers (CMW). Some states have enacted their legislations protecting and promoting migrant workers as they move along the labor migration chain. While there is almost a universal agreement by free market advocates that free movement of goods is fundamentally beneficial to countries, it is only much recently that they recognize the positive (economic) impact of free movement of people. The Post 2015 UN Agenda has placed ‘migration and development’ in the global agenda. It stressed upon the global relevance of international labor migration, impact of remittances, trends indicating feminization of migration, human rights issues, and impact of climate change. Migration-development as a global thematic has been integrated as a cross-cutting theme in the SDGs. In ASEAN, Member States have started to talk about harmonizing standards for regulating labor migration in the region, drawing from WTO’s GATS Mode 4, the CMW and domestic legislations from each of the 10 ASEAN Member States. ASEAN Member States have agreed on several policy instruments addressing trafficking of women and girls, violence against women and children, but largely lacking in terms of improving access to justice for sexual violence, restrictions on right to work and mobility, and access to sexual and reproductive health services. Unfortunately too, they haven’t made progress in drafting an integrated regional framework to address the challenges of various migration flows in the region. For the last 5 years, they have been unable to agree on the legal nature of the document, and specifically on issues of irregular (labor) migration and domestic work. Principles of non-interference and consensus building hinder these governments from reaching consensus. Perceived competing interests of labor-sending and labor-receiving countries come into play. Not many ASEAN governments ratified the UN Refugees Convention and has measures to protect and promote rights of asylum seekers and refugees in the region. At most, they provide them temporary shelters and access to often cheap and precarious job options with very little access to justice for labor and other forms of exploitation. Migrants in the region show tenacity and agency to live decently and safely despite the dire conditions of poverty and inequality. However, the fragmented nature of the ASEAN as a governing body contributes to further marginalization, disenfranchisement, and abuse of vulnerable and marginalized peoples migrating in the region. Their options are not easily facilitated by ASEAN governments, and in worse cases, even hindered by state action. There are plenty of studies and research focusing on violations of women’s rights perpetrated by States and private entities such as employers and illegal recruiters throughout the migration cycle in Southeast Asia. There are many researches looking into trafficking in persons and human smuggling for sexual exploitation and for labor exploitation in many industries (mainly in garments industry, fishing sector, agriculture, and tourism). A way forward is to enable and strengthen people-to-people dialogues among citizens of the ASEAN, exercise the mandates of ASEAN human rights bodies to their fullest extent, and document more good practices from the region of protecting rights and managing movements of peoples. Southeast Asia is one of the most dynamic regions in the world, experiencing high levels of people’s mobility. Around two thirds of the estimated 10.2 million international migrants currently working and living in ASEAN come from the region. The World Bank estimates that 21.3 million ASEAN nationals live outside of their country. Of the ASEAN countries, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei are top destinations for labor migrants, both skilled and unskilled, from the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam. Malaysia and Thailand is both sending, receiving and transit countries for labor migrants. People move for different reasons. The ILO identified the following drivers for movement of migrant workers in ASEAN: demographic evolution, economic growth, labor shortages, wage differentials, existence of networks associated with recruitment, and connectivity--ie better communication and cheaper transportation. Movements of workers are highly regulated. International standards and norms have evolved towards the protection of the rights of migrant workers. Migration is included for the first time in the global development framework, through SDG goals and targets. ASEAN has its Framework Instrument for the protection of the rights of migrant workers which also emanates from domestic laws of each member-state. The instrument deals with regular/irregular migration in the region, domestic work, and exchange of skilled labor. There are also many agreements, guidelines, and protocols in ASEAN addressing human rights violations and abuses in the course of people’s migration: human trafficking, violence against women and children, slavery. These instruments and protocol give particular attention on vulnerable women and children. Recognizing vulnerabilities of workers in the seafood industry worldwide the ASEAN held its first meeting to protect migrant fishers in 2013. Instruments of maritime and fishing regulation have categorized States as flag States, labor-supply State, port State, coastal State, and a market State. Governments and the business community in the region pledged to take measures to protect and safeguard the workers and address issues on recruitment, working conditions, and forced labor, trafficking, slavery, and child labor. And what perhaps lie in the margins of migration discourse and regulation are those who are perceived as traditionally mobile who often inhabit the coasts and seas of Southeast Asia. They are often labeled as ‘nomadic’, their increasingly sedentary ways romanticized. They’ve been labeled as ‘stateless peoples’ because no country in the region can provide them citizenship. How do these categories resonate with the locality, how people especially women and these ‘States’ and stateless communities move and shape trade and relationships in the region? And what can be learned from them in terms of encouraging and enabling freer movement of people? Jem intends to go to Sulawesi to learn about mobility of people in fishing communities, the social relations in those communities and how they are structured. Any insights? She wants to hear from you. Comment here. |
JemI am passionate about women's rights and community development. I want to learn from social movements in Asia and the Pacific. My GIST project explores issues of people's mobility in Southeast Asia. I like art. I love dogs. I drink lots of coffee. Archives
April 2017
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