Fighting forced labor helps women beat poverty

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By Guy Ryder, Special for CNN
Editor’s Note: Guy Ryder is the Director-General of the International Labour Organization. This week it is launching The Work in Freedom program, an initiative funded by the UK Department for International Development which aims to help 100,000 women and girls from Bangladesh,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], India and Nepal who are in forced labor in countries including Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and India.
Across the planet, about one in every seven of us lives in extreme poverty, having to survive on less than $1.25 a day. Every day, they and the millions more living just above the poverty line struggle to have enough to eat, and dream of a better life and of earning enough to provide for their families.
Geeta Devi was one of these people. The 32 year-old mother of two from Nepal had been struggling to support her children and,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], like millions before her, made the difficult decision to leave her family behind in search of better work. Geeta, whose real name is being withheld to protect her safety, left her home believing she had secured a job through a local recruitment agency to work in a hospital in Lebanon.
When she arrived in Beirut, the man who collected her at the airport told her that she would actually be employed as a domestic worker in his house.
Geeta had used her meager savings to travel abroad and now had no money to fly home. And so she was forced to accept the job. What followed was an all too familiar story of exploitation – no wages, physical and psychological abuse, loss of contact with family and restriction of movement.
The sad thing is that Geeta’s case is not an exception. It is a situation faced by millions of women and girls from southern Asia who migrate with hope,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], only to find themselves far from home, behind closed household or factory doors in often horrific conditions.
Across the world,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], there are 21 million forced laborers, and more than half of them are women and girls. They are trapped in work under unimaginable conditions, into which they were coerced or deceived and from which they cannot escape.
Women trafficked into Iraq
The emotional and physical impact on the individuals is terrible. And there is an economic dimension too: we estimate that victims of forced labor are being denied at least $21 billion of income a year and this is money that could be lifting families and entire communities out of poverty.
I find it unacceptable that such slavery-like conditions can exist anywhere in the world today,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
There are several factors involved,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], from deception by unscrupulous labor recruiters to exploitation at the hands of employers in the destination region or country. Migrant domestic workers are particularly vulnerable because they are highly dependent on their employers, and because private homes are often excluded from labor market regulations and labor inspection.