LatinaLista — From June 4-5, 2010 in Bucharest, Romania, women from around the world met to discuss the human rights of one class of women who have no voice in how they are treated — migrant women.
The result of that conference, coordinated by the Europe-based Globalizing Gender Equality and Social Justice organization, otherwise known as WIDE, is the new report titled Migration in the Context of Globalisation: Women’s Human Rights at Risk?
With more countries attempting to seal their borders or forcefully enforce immigration policy, the impact it imposes on migrant women has raised a red flag in the global community of human rights activists.
According to the report, migration is a survival strategy. Yet too many women are being sexually trafficked or exploited because of their citizenship status. In worst case scenarios, the women are victimized once by their captors and, in some countries, by governments since they blame the women for getting into the situation and impose a stigma on the women.
The report presents case studies of different migrant women’s situations in various countries and focuses chapters on topics such as: “Dilemmas of Gender, Movement and Citizenship,” “Human Trafficking and Migrant Women’s Rights,” and “Migration and Violence Against Women.”
Women migrate because they want to improve conditions for their families, they try to find work or study to learn new skills which can result in increased economic power within the family. Some flee from repressive regimes or abuse in their families. There are currently over 200 millions people outside their countries of origin, 104 million of these are women. Around 86 millions migrants are in the labour market of which approximately 50 per cent or more are women.
