Indonesia
Every year about 700,000 documented Indonesian migrant workers leave home to seek employment abroad. Their primary destinations are the Middle East and Asia, with the two most common destinations being Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. The latest data from the National Agency for the Protection and Placement of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI) in August 2009 stated that there are approximately 4.3 million workers are presently working overseas, who contributed around US$ 6 billion and 8.2 billion in remittances to the Indonesian national economy in respectively 2007 and 2008. The number of undocumented migrants is estimated to be 2–4 times higher. Approximately 75 per cent of all documented Indonesian migrant workers are women, with the vast majority working as domestic workers.
Domestic work in itself is not forced labour, but domestic workers disproportionately experience severe forms of labour exploitation, including forced labour and trafficking. The perpetrators of these practices are mostly brokers, recruitment agents, employers and complicit officials. The forced labour and trafficking practices to which domestic workers are most commonly exposed are:
- Entering into debt bondage because of excessive or illegal recruitment fees;
- Traveling with forged travel documents;
- Having their contract substituted for an inferior one;
- Being deceived about the work conditions;
- Having travel documents and salary withheld;
- Confinement; being prevented from communicating;
- Working excessive hours without any days off;
- Being subjected to physical or sexual abuse; and
- Experiencing the destruction of their ID, illegal harassment and extortion, detention and abuse by law enforcement agencies, employers and private agents.
The ILO response
Supported by Norwegian Government, the ILO has combated forced labour and trafficking of Indonesian migrant workers by supporting the development of legal and policy framework on migrant workers, outreach and empowerment of migrant workers and targeted interventions to respond to forced labour and trafficking problems. The Migrant Workers’ Project aims to contribute to the eradication of discrimination and exploitation of Indonesian migrant workers in Indonesia and selected main receiving countries in Southeast Asia.
- To achieve this objective, an integrated approach is applied to comprehensively address both causes and impact of forced labour and trafficking in domestic workers. Concrete actions that have been identified are:
- Advocacy and technical cooperation;
- Awareness raising;
- Capacity building;
- Direct assistance and service provision; and
- Targeted research and documentation.