BY:

K.Punith Kumar
Rithvik Menon
Safa Tabassum

CONTENTS
S.No Topics Pg.no.

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1. Human Rights

2. Human rights of vulnerable groups 2

3. Violation of Human rights of Migrant workers 3

Migrant domestic workers in Jordan run the 3

4. gauntlet between abuse and jail

5. Picture Gallery 7

6. Bibliography 8

HUMAN RIGHTS
 Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our
nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion,
language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights
without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and
indivisible.
Universal human rights are often expressed and guaranteed by law, in the
forms of treaties, customary international law, general principles and other
sources of international law. International human rights law lays down
obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts,
in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of
individuals or groups.

HUMAN RIGHTS OF VULNERABLE GROUPS

Among the general human rights fields, a large area has to be devoted to
certain marginalised groups, including indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities,
refugees, migrant workers and the poor. Among these groups, the rate of
disability is higher than among the rest of the population. Whereas the concept of
a special regime for certain groups has been developed during the last few years
by the UN and some international instruments such as the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 27), the human rights and
fundamental freedoms of marginalised people are vastly underserved.
Furthermore, the human rights of persons with disabilities are lagging behind
even further.
Twelve groups are discussed: 1) women and girls; 2) children; 3) refugees;
4) internally displaced persons; 5) stateless persons; 6) national minorities; 7)
indigenous peoples 8) migrant workers; 9) disabled persons; 10) elderly persons;
11) HIV positive persons and AIDS victims; 12) Roma/Gypsies/Sinti; and 13)
lesbian, gay and transgender people. Clearly this is not an exhaustive list of
persons in need of particular protection, as many other groups not discussed in
this part suffer from discrimination and oppression.

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 VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS OF
MIGRANT WORKERS
Migrant workers are people who leave their homeland and migrate to
foreign land in search of work. Let’s now discuss a case where the rights of
migrant workers in Jordan were violated.

Migrant domestic workers in Jordan run the

gauntlet between abuse and jail
Maricel realised too late that the window had locked shut behind her. The
31-year-old Filipina was perched outside a second floor window, blood filling
her mouth where two teeth had been smashed out. She had climbed on to the
ledge to flee her employer, who had grabbed her hair and bashed her face into a
wall, Maricel says.
“It’s so high. I want to go back, but the glass doesn’t open. Madam is
close. She is screaming, ‘I kill you now!’” Maricel says. “What can I do? I
jumped.”

Maricel had arrived in Jordan three months earlier, one of the country’s
50,000 migrant domestic workers. They travel from the Philippines, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh and Kenya, seeking jobs as caretakers, housekeepers and nannies to
support their families at home.

Many get decent paid work; others are not so lucky. In a 2011 report by
Human Rights Watch, half of the migrant domestic workers interviewed said
employers or recruitment agency staff had physically or sexually abused them.
Others have had their salaries and passports withheld, or live in poor conditions.

In the fall from the window, Maricel fractured her legs and spine but
managed to make it to a nearby highway, from where a bus driver helped her to a
hospital. After two months in hospital she was transferred by Jordanian public
security to the Philippine embassy’s shelter for abused migrants. She pressed
charges and her employer was imprisoned in spring 2015.

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 Maricel couldn’t walk for six months. She has been in the shelter since
February 2015, waiting for the legal case to be settled – her employer still has
her passport and she will have to pay about 1,000 Jordanian dinars (£1,130) for
overstaying her visa. “I just want to go home,” she says.
Abused migrant workers who escape their employers but don’t find shelter
with their embassy face imprisonment for being illegal workers. An
estimated 37% of migrant domestic workers in Jordan work illegally.

Elizabeth, from Kenya, has been in the Juweida women’s correctional and

rehabilitation centre, in the south of Amman, for two weeks. “I ran away because
my madam beat me,” she says, pulling her clothes aside to show bruises below
her neck. Elizabeth is awaiting deportation but needs to pay her visa overstay fee
first.
She shares a cell with 10 other Kenyans and an Ethiopian. Most are
runaways; some have been accused of theft. “But they didn’t steal. The madams
in Jordan, they will say anything,” Elizabeth says.

Under Jordanian law migrant domestic workers should be deported, not

imprisoned, for violating labour or residency regulations, especially when they
may be victims of trafficking and abuse, explains Linda al-Kalash, director
of Tamkeen Fields for Aid, a legal centre for migrant rights in Jordan.

“There is no article in the residency laws about imprisoning them. There’s

nothing about prison for someone who decided to break their work contract.”

Some domestic workers jailed for not paying visa overstay fines end up in
detention for years.

Of the 281 migrant worker detainees Tamkeen has interviewed, 55% were
held between three weeks and four months, 18% for five to 11 months, and 5%
for between one and two years.
Jordanian authorities say they are committed to protecting victims of
trafficking. The country passed a counter-trafficking law in 2009 and has two
shelters for victims of human trafficking, one run by the government and another
by the Jordanian Women’s Union (JWU).

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 “We put victims in shelter, not prison. We’re committed to stopping
trafficking and to protecting these workers as guests,” says Basel al-Tarawneh,
the government coordinator on human rights. In 2016, the counter-trafficking
unit investigated 30 confirmed cases of human trafficking and sent 196 victims,
mostly domestic workers, to shelters. They also exempted 11 trafficked domestic
workers from paying visa overstay fines.
But trafficking is narrowly defined in Jordanian law. Many cases of abuse
don’t qualify as trafficking, says Kalash, and then the victims go to prison
instead of a shelter. “It may not be a trafficking case, but it’s still abuse. There’s
no place for labour abuse victims, only prison.”
The labour ministry says migrant workers who abscond must face some
kind of penalty.
“We have more than 50,000 maids in Jordan,” says spokesman
Mohammad al-Khateeb. “Suppose 10,000 run away. If I arrest 50 or 60 every
day, where should I put them?”

Many domestic workers are not victims of abuse, he adds, but run away
because they want to make more money. When they become illegal they no
longer come under the ministry’s jurisdiction. If migrant workers choose to leave
their employer and don’t go through official channels then they have to face the
consequences. “We need to have organised, legal labour,” Khateeb says.
Migrant workers who want to change employer must go through a formal
procedure overseen by the Ministry of Labour. This is “near impossible” for
many migrant workers, says Kalash. “All the power is in the employers’ hands as
they must give consent for the worker to change jobs.” Domestic workers cannot
always rely on recruitment agencies for protection either. Martha*, a Kenyan
domestic worker, came to Jordan in June 2015 and worked for a year without
problems. She tried to change workplaces because her employer wouldn’t cover
medical fees when she got sick.
Martha says her agency sent her to different Jordanian employers on short-
term contracts, collecting money each time for her residency and work permits.
But instead of processing her papers, Martha says, they kept the money and she
became an illegal worker, liable for two years of visa overstay charges and with
no residency permit.

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 Martha says she was locked in an office room with other migrant women.
“They would close the door at five and leave. After that one of the guys would
come back and start molesting me. We were telling God to protect us. It was hell
on earth.”
Martha eventually escaped to Tamkeen, which brought her to the JWU
shelter. She was afraid to ask for police help, but thankful when authorities later
intervened.

“We fear the police,” she says. “Because maybe the employer will say,
‘She stole something’, and they put you in jail.”

After receiving 960 complaints from domestic workers and dealing with
1,402 runaway cases in 2016, the labour ministry says it gave warnings to 27
recruitment agencies for misconduct and shut down eight agencies.
Kalash says that if domestic workers were allowed to change employers
and had an official and trusted way to register cases of abuse, absconding cases
would fall. “Nobody wants to be irregular. Everyone wants to be safe. You want
to feel unafraid, not for anybody to arrest you, hurt you, exploit you – but right
now in Jordan there is no chance for this.”

CONCLUSION:
This case depicts the life of domestic migrant workers in Jordan. Migrant
workers migrate in search of work and a better life. They get work but do they
always get a better life over there? To ensure their better life there are many
beneficial human rights allotted especially for them but what will they do if those
rights were also violated? The government should take severe action against
those violations but what if the government itself violates the rights or is
allowing to violate the rights? Give a thought to these questions in our mind and
ask our friends to do the same and for some reason we all get the same answer.
And to change all this there is only one way, a better corruption free government.
If we have a corruption free government the official will do their part correctly
and the violators of human rights will get the punishment they deserve at the
right time officially.

PICTURE GALLERY
Maricel(domestic worker from Jordan)

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Websites:
www.ohchr.org
www.un.org
www.theguardian.com
www.wikipedia.com
Officials:
The State secretary of ‘The Consumer Council of India’.