JAKARTA, June 20 (Jakarta Post/ANN): With the government and lawmakers seemingly dragging their feet in providing better protection for Indonesian domestic workers, activists have set out to fight for their rights on the international stage.
Indonesia has at least five million domestic workers, according to the National Advocacy Network (JALA), and many of them experience hostile working conditions, including abusive treatment and given no days off or health insurance by their employers.
Iweng Karsiwen, an ex-migrant domestic worker and activist from the Big Family of Indonesian Migrant Workers (Kabar Bumi), flew to New York City, the United States, in late May to speak to in United Nations’ International Migration Review Forum (UN IMRF) stakeholder meeting.
She urged governments to pay more attention to their practice of Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), a non-legally binding international deal approved in 2018 that encourages countries to protect migrant workers.
She noted that Indonesia had not sent a representative to attend the IMRF meeting.
Karsiwen added that she had submitted a report to the UN’s Human Rights Council (OCHR) in Geneva, Switzerland, on the situation in Indonesia, hoping that it would prompt international pressure on the government to grant domestic workers more rights.
“Fighting about this at home, most times, will not get us anywhere. We have tried dialogues, petitions, declarations, you name it – nothing works. We are left with no choice but to humiliate the government at an international forum,” Karsiwen said.
“Hopefully, if the pressure is coming from international actors and not us, it would prompt the government to grant us more protection."
Indonesian domestic workers also aired out their worries and frustrations over the government’s lackluster efforts in providing legal protection at the commemoration of World Domestic Workers Day on Thursday via an online forum, which was also attended by activists and civil society organizations (CSOs).
Despite many cases of domestic worker abuse, there is currently no law in Indonesia that protects them, most of whom are women and minors.
The prevailing Labor Law excludes domestic work as a legitimate profession, shunning workers from any legal protection.
In some instances, this allows perpetrators of human trafficking to take advantage and abuse those seeking domestic work.
“So, many workers are uninformed about what would be considered normal in the profession, and they are largely powerless,” said Fajar of the Solidarity Workforce Community (Ganas), who is currently in her 10th year as a domestic worker in Taiwan.
Problems in the system
Judha Nugraha, the Foreign Ministry’s director of protection for overseas citizens, said protection for Indonesian workers overseas currently existed through Law No. 18/2017.
He stressed that there was a mechanism in place that handled abuse cases of domestic workers, who make up 70 percent of Indonesians living abroad.
“Of course, we understand that until we solve the root of the problem, then these abuse cases will continue to appear. The majority of these instances are caused by the governance system in Indonesia,” Judha told The Jakarta Post.
The lack of local law enforcement to protect domestic workers has also made memorandum of understanding (MOU) negotiations with foreign countries more challenging, he said.
“When we try to negotiate for an MoU to grant [workers] protection, the other countries tend to want to evaluate what we already have domestically.
"And it is hard for us to demand many things because we are asking them to provide something for our citizens that we are not providing ourselves,” Judha said.
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