Imagine finally making it. Escaping from a life of poverty, you leave home for a job that promises to pay more than you had ever imagined. Your work permit has been approved, and you’re finally able to support your family. You step off a plane and get picked up by your new employer, but something isn’t right.
You can’t leave. Locked in the home of a stranger, your passport is taken and you are beaten and sexually assaulted.
Erwiana, a young Indonesian woman, fell prey to the promise of a similar “high paying job” in Hong Kong last year.
After 8 months of being forced to work with no pay in a Hong Kong family’s home, Erwiana’s beaten and broken body was dumped at the city’s largest airport with a one-way ticket home and a frightening threat—tell anyone about what happened and your parents will be killed.
Her case was discovered and reported, and with the assistance of local organizations, the people who did this to her are being brought to justice.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Around the world, there are at least 64.5 million domestic workers—over 15% are children and the overwhelming majority are women, many of whom do not have legal protections.
North America is home to an estimated 1.5 million trafficked persons alone. Many of these people are domestic workers—an industry with a growing worth of $8 billion in profits every year.
Many domestic workers in the United States are hard working people who enjoy their jobs and have fair working conditions. But the private and unregulated nature of the job does make these workers vulnerable to exploitation and sometimes a destination job for trafficked women.
This is the problem that authorities grapple with: how to regulate a global industry where workers are so open to exploitation and abuse.
Enter Convention 189—a document that creates international law preventing the trafficking and exploitation of domestic workers like Erwiana. This new international law deals with much of the complexity of the problem while still allowing domestic workers to earn a fair living and bargain for their conditions.
National governments have begun to sign on to Convention 189, but the U.S. and other larger countries are lagging behind in its support for tougher global protections for domestic workers.
For many, these new global protections can’t come fast enough. We know that the more countries like the U.S. sign onto Convention 189, the more robust the law will be and the better the protection for domestic workers.
Occasionally our governments need reminding that the plight of some of the most vulnerable must become a priority. Join me in calling on the United States to support global protections for domestic workers by ratifying Convention 189.
Michael Hayworth is a senior campaigner with Walk Free—the movement to end modern slavery—and works to eradicate exploitation of domestic workers and those trapped in forced labor. Follow him on Twitter @michaelhayworth.
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