Nairobi, Kenya -- Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR), a coalition of groups across Africa campaigning for the popularization, ratification and domestication of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, welcomes the 15th ratification by Togo of the Protocol on 26 October. The Protocol will now come into force within 30 days, marking a milestone in the protection and promotion of women’s rights in Africa and creating new rights for women in terms of international standards.

This kit developed by UNIFEM is informed by the experience of struggle, resilience and creative practice of women migrant workers and their support groups. It enhances an understanding of how prevention of discrimination and abuse of women migrant workers should be addressed as issues of ensuring gender equality and basic human rights; promoting sustainable development and good governance. Finally it reinforces commitment to collaborative action between government and civil society stakeholders within and across countries and regions, in ways that meaningfully protect and empower women migrant workers.

The briefing paper is intended to provide tools for human rights advocates working to advance the rights of women migrant workers. It examines a set of concerns facing women migrant workers – with an emphasis on women in domestic service. It further demonstrates how the five most relevant major human rights instruments – the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families (MWC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

The publication takes women’s migration for work as an illustration to demonstrate how CEDAW’s methodological framework – in fact the entire Convention – can be effectively used to address the long term and immediate concerns of women migrants, at all stages of the migration process, even in the absence of a specific Article on migration. It further shows how CEDAW’s existing potential to address migration can be significantly strengthened through the adoption of a General Recommendation on migration.

The publication is a report of the UNIFEM-CEDAW Panel on Addressing Women Migrant Workers’ Concerns, held during the CEDAW session in New York, June 2003. The report highlights the explicit and disproportionate rights violations of women migrant workers in relation to men at all stages of the migration process; and how the rights of women migrant workers can be more effectively addressed through the CEDAW process in both countries of origin and employment.

Feature Story from the Migration Information Source

An Information Guide - Preventing Discrimination, Exploitation and Abuse of Women Migrant Workers