T

he International Labor Organization (ILO) is encouraging the Indonesian government to make optimum use of bilateral and multilateral agreements to better protect its migrant workers abroad.

'In the past two decades, Indonesia has become one of the world's largest suppliers of migrant workers. Therefore, migrant workers are an important part of Indonesian manpower, which the government must protect by using its bilateral and multilateral agreements,' the ILO's deputy director for Indonesia, Michiko Miyamoto, said as quoted by Antara news agency.

As one of the world's migrant-worker suppliers, Indonesia annually sent around 700,000 migrant workers abroad, primarily to East Asia,
Southeast Asia and the Middle East, she said. Of those, nearly 78 percent were employed as domestic helpers.

'Although migrant domestic helpers are Indonesia's second-largest foreign-exchange earner, many of these 'foreign exchange heroes' suffer exploitation and torture during their tenures, both in Indonesia and overseas,' she said.

To protect its migrant workers overseas, she said, Indonesia could utilize to the ILO's multilateral framework of non-binding principles and guidelines for a rights-based approach to labor migration.