Anis Hidayah, executive director of Migrant Care, an organization working for domestic workers protection, did not have much time to bask in her glory after winning a prestigious award from New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Right after a dinner ceremony on Nov. 1 in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, where she received the Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism in front of US donors who bought dinner tickets ranging from US$1,000 to $100,000, she embarked on trips to Washington DC, Chicago and Toronto in Canada. She met various audiences; United Nations officials, law university and high school students, US journalists and other activists.
“Some among the audience know about migrant workers’ problems, although the knowledge is not very deep particularly with Indonesian workers. Some do not have any idea at all,” Anis said in an email sent during her busy schedule in Chicago.
She met an editor of the New York Times, to whom she spoke about Saudi Arabia, which she called “brutal”, especially concerning five Indonesian migrant domestic workers in the country who were on death row. “I also met with UN Women, the Arab States Desk officials, and we discussed about strategies and planning, also UN Women’s role in facilitating a dialogue to push Saudi Arabia to be more open and push for access to justice,” Anis said.
In all the meetings, Anis said, she tried to raise awareness among the US public, which she hoped would lead to changes. She used the personal approach several times, to involve more individuals in the issue.
Her speech at the dinner ceremony also tapped into the audience’s empathy, to feel what many Indonesian women experienced.
“Imagine that you are living in Indonesia. Your family needs to put food on the table. And a middle man promises you a better life ... Before you even leave the country, the middle man locks you in a training center—sometimes for up to three months,” thus Anis began her speech. “You work without rest. You may not be paid and you may be beaten. ... In an abusive situation, you have no escape.”
Nisha Varia, a HRW senior researcher at the women’s rights division, said that the US public knew more about sex trafficking but not so much about the problems faced by migrant domestic workers, mostly women. Varia said the abuse of migrant domestic workers involved many more people than sex trafficking, but it only got a fraction of the attention. She said while millions of Indonesian women sent home billions of dollars while providing important care to the elderly and children in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, among others, they were also a source of so much exploitation. “This makes it among the most pressing human rights and women’s rights issues,” she said in HRW’s headquarters in the Empire State Building. “This invisible abuse really needs to be given a higher profile.”
Anis also met with US State Department officials, with whom she asked the US government to look into the Indonesian government’s migrant worker protection measures and policies in relation to the US’ yearly report on global human trafficking.
Anis is among seven activists around the world who received the Alison Des Forges award this year. Anis received the award in the New York dinner ceremony along with Farai Maguwi, an activist working against the abuses taking place in the Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe. The other five activists, from Egypt, Tunisia, Russia, Mexico and Iran, received the award at dinners in cities around the world like
Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Hamburg in Germany. “It is a competitive process to be awarded this prize. We chose Anis Hidayah because she has been such a leader and one of the most prominent voices on this issue,” Varia said.
Besides feeling honored, Anis said she felt that the award reminded her, and also the Indonesian government, of much unfinished work. “There has been some progress. The government is now at least more open; they admit the problems. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also often talks about protection. It has been, however, limited to rhetoric because he cares so much about image.”
The president’s penchant for a good image, she said, could be useful, nonetheless. International pressure would become an important tool, especially after Yudhoyono’s speech before an International Labor Organization conference earlier this year in Geneva, where he promised Indonesian commitment to worker protection, Anis said.
The same conference also saw the adoption of new standards that will be legalized in the ILO Convention of Decent Work for Domestic Workers, which is pivotal in changing the fate of millions of domestic workers, ILO estimates range between 53 million and 100 million globally, and the families who employ them.
