TORs
Two chapters of the Regional Report on Women Migrant Workers within and abroad the African Continent:
Women Migrant Workers from and within Central and North Africa
External Collaborator Contract
1 Introduction *
UNCTAD’s Economic Development in Africa 2018 Report mentioned that the main countries of destination for intra-African international migrants were South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya and that contemporary economic migration in Africa has traditionally been largely male-dominated. Furthermore, it stated that “Southern Africa has consistently reported a much lower share and Northern Africa experienced a significant decline in women’s migration in 1990– 2005. Indeed, economic migrants in Africa in the nine countries[1] studied showed a considerable gender divide with men migrating in larger numbers. However, the report also identified recent growing peaks with almost half of international migrants from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya and Senegal being women. It also mentioned that in 2017, the share of international women migrants in Eastern Africa exceeded continental average”[2].
A recent ITUC-Africa Study Africa Labour Migration to the GCC States: the case of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda suggested that the migration of African women as domestic workers to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE)) is on a steady increase and that an important number are facing significant decent work challenges. For example, women migrant workers from Ethiopia are subjected to harsh working conditions and abuse of human rights including confiscation of passports, unpaid and underpaid wages, working for longer hours and sexual abuse. A study conducted by Alkarib (2016) found that women domestic migrant workers from Africa to the Gulf countries are the lowest paid among other migrant domestic workers. They argued that the wage gap is due to discrimination.
According to the 2nd edition of the ILO’s *Global Estimates on International Migrant Workers,** women migrant workers in Africa represented 0.3 million in Northern Africa and 3.6 million in Sub-Saharan Africa. Women migrants in Northern Africa showed a labour force participation rate of 33% and women migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa 47.3%.
Lately, there have been emerging migration trends and diversification of migration and mobility within the continent. Traditional emigration countries (e.g. Morocco, Tunisia) have become host or transit countries; the Indian Ocean (Seychelles and Mauritius) have become significant countries of destination, and migration flows are rapidly growing towards Gulf Cooperation Council and Middle East countries. Indeed, labour migration flows mainly from East African, but also from West African countries towards the Gulf and the Middle East are on the rise. It is also important to mention that migration flows from North African countries to Europe (largely related to its proximity) are declining to a certain extent while migration flows from Sub-Saharan countries (often through Maghreb countries) and with a final destination European countries such as Spain, Italy, France and Belgium are on the increase.
The stock of migrants from African countries in the GCC in 2017 was estimated to be over 3.4 million or 12 per cent of the total stock (including workers in both regular and irregular situation) and around 242,000 in Jordan and Lebanon.[3] Whilst Egypt dominates as a country of origin (2.48 million or 72.5 per cent of the African migrant stock in the GCC), countries from Sub-Saharan African are also prominent, including Sudan (656,800), and Ethiopia (165,600).[4] The most popular destination countries were the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Qatar, with data between 2000 and 2017 showing a particular increase in the African migrant stocks in Qatar and UAE, relative to the rest of the migrant stock population (see Table 1).[5]
Table 1: African Migrant Stocks and Share in the Population of GCC countries 2000 and 2017
Country African Migrant stock (2000) % migr. popln (2000) African Migrant stock (2017) % of migrant popln (2017)
Bahrain 33,705 14 98,011 13.6
Kuwait 158,746 14 498,082 16
Oman 38,453 6.1 94,843 4.6
Qatar 14,280 4 199,861 11.6
KSA 638,991 12.1 1,456,184 12.0
UAE 347,271 14.1 1,972,657 24.7
All GCC 1,221,446 12.1 3, 419,638 12.16**
Source: UNDESA 2017
While comprehensive data on flows is not available, some indicative information can be found from different administrative sources in countries of origin. For example, the Ethiopian government data indicates that 480,480 citizens regularly migrated to the Middle East between 2015-18; while data from various Kenyan embassies indicates that between 100,000 to 300,000 Kenyan migrants are estimated to be in in the Gulf countries.[6] In Lebanon too, there is an indication of growing numbers of African domestic workers. According to administrative data, there were more than 178,000 Ethiopian domestic workers in 2018, but also an increasing number of Ghanian, Kenyan, and Togolese workers.[7]
This Regional Report will contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals’ target 8.8 (Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments for all workers, including migrant workers, in particular women migrants, and those in precarious employment) and target 10.7 (Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies). It will also contribute to achieving SDG 5 “Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls”.
While they continue mainly migrating for family reasons, women are increasingly migrating for employment reasons on their own account, and often as their family’s primary income earner. In Africa, the growing precariousness of the labour force are pushing women, as much as men, to seek employment at home and abroad while the rise in women national workers joining the labour force has resulted in an increasing need for women migrants in some main countries of destination. Indeed, the growing labour market demand in the agricultural, as well as the care sector, hotel and restaurant services, cleaning services, and others is serving as an attractive magnet.
African States face challenges in terms of developing and enforcing laws and policies that address the needs of women migrant workers specifically. Often legislation is gender blind, or directly or indirectly establishes barriers to women’s regular migration into formal sector jobs. In particular, bans (e.g. Madagascar and Ethiopia) imposed on women’s migration into specific sectors or countries, have been seen to promote the growth of unlicensed recruiters and increase the potential for forced labour or trafficking as well as reducing women’s access to assistance. A lack of understanding about the specificities of women’s labour migration, the limitations they face and the policy responses needed to ensure labour migration is fair and safe for women is commonly a pervasive reason for legislative frameworks that are not gender-responsive. This is often accompanied by limited resources and, in some cases, lack of political will and further compounded by the lack of standardised and sex-disaggregated data on migration”.
More particularly, these challenges are often related to gender-blind and biased labour migration policies that can result in:
ü Discrimination, violence and harassment[8] that limit their access to safe, orderly and regular migration, fair recruitment and decent work throughout the migration cycle, as well as their ability to have a positive migration experience. Women have fewer options than men for regular migration, and are often employed in lower paid informal sectors with few if any labour protections. In particular, women migrant workers are over-represented in domestic and care work, an occupation which is not covered by many labour laws in the region and where you can find an important number of women and girls involved in child labour as well as in forced labour.
ü Poor women migrants’ organization and voice- challenges in joining or forming workers’ organisations, particularly for domestic workers in the informal economy who work in segregated and isolated workplaces can create important barriers to organizing and advocating for labour rights.
ü Poor working and living conditions particularly lack of regulation of working hours and poor wages. large numbers of them confronting situations including withholding of wages, illegal deduction of fees, insufficient daily, weekly and holidays’ rest periods, no payment of overtime and annual leave, withholding of passports and other identity documents, unjustified demands to carry out tasks other than those specified in the contract (such as cleaning other family members’ houses) and unjustified terminations.
ü Lack of freedom of movement is common with women migrant workers, particularly those in the domestic sector not permitted to have enough daily rest and often no weekly rest periods. Women migrants usually receive the lowest wages compared to men migrant workers and women and men national workers.
ü Lack or little respect for their fundamental human and labour rights (forced labour and child labour, discrimination, collective bargaining, freedom of association, etc);
ü Deskilling and lack of recognition and portability of skills of low-skilled women migrant workers as well as lack of access to skills development;
ü Women migrant workers in an irregular situation- Women migrant workers in an irregular situation in the informal economy continue representing at least a third of all migration flows and many of them continue falling victims to labour exploitation, and often trafficking and forced labour situations.
ü Lack of access to justice and opportunity to voice their grievances- due to the invisibility of workplace environment, physical isolation and restricted movement, they have less access to lodge a complaint and seek redress.
2 Objectives and Outputs of this consultancy
The objective of this consultancy is to produce two Studies on African women migrant workers from and within Central and North Africa. The two chapters will comprise information on gender equality and women’s empowerment issues related to labour migration governance. They will include information on Laws and regulations and policies that addresses the specific needs of women migrant workers, and on the significant proportion of women migrant workers in certain occupations and sectors. Comparing them to men migrant workers, but also to men and women national workers, it will describe women migrant workers’ working conditions and wages, social protection, regular migration opportunities offered to them, labour market integration, concentration in the informal economy and their transition to the formal economy (if any), involvement of child and forced labour, and other related labour and social protection issues. Lastly, it will also mention if women migrant workers suffer from deskilling and lack of recognition and portability of skills in larger numbers than men migrant workers.
The two reports will become part of a Regional Report on women migrant workers from and within the African continent. The latter will be composed of 5 individual studies/subreports as follows:
- West Africa Chapter - partly funded by ROAF and partly by our FMM project. Ready
2) South Africa Chapter- funded by SAMM project;
3) East Africa Chapter- funded by IGAD project;
4) Central Africa- funded by ROAF;
5) North Africa- funded by ROAF.
The studies/chapters will be based on desk review of law, policy and practice. If possible, they will include interviews with key stakeholders and focus groups. They should contain the following sections:
Introduction
Executive Summary
Methodology
Review of ratification of ILO and UN standards on the protection of women migrant workers per sub-region and of sub-regional standards and policy frameworks (with contribution to be provided by the ILO)
Law, policy and practice review of women migrant workers’ labour market situation during the migration process. This would include
o Brief overview of women’s labour market situation/status of women migrant workers in the countries covered (labour market segregation, equal pay for work of equal value, sectors of employment, type of occupations, services)
o Analysis of laws and policies affecting the situation of women migrating for employment purposes (including labour law, migration law, family law, recruitment policies)
o Any restrictions on women’s employment (Bans on certain sectors, or countries)
o Pre-departure information and training (different approach for men and women)
o Access to information and services (e.g. social protection):
o Access to skills development, skills recognition
o Working and living conditions, decent work deficits (see above);
o Access to collective bargaining
o Access to justice
Conclusions and Recommendations
Annexes
3 Methodology
· Detailed literature review (this should include existing available research and any relevant comments from the ILO supervisory bodies (CEACR, CAS, CFA) relating to the situation of women migrant workers in North and Central Africa and of Northern and Central African women migrants in main countries of destination, particularly in the countries selected as case studies).
· Each chapter should be no longer than 50 pages long including Annexes and the bibliography.
The consultant might also:
· Develop interview guidelines for key informants and a focus group discussions’ guide including a list of discussion questions.
· Undertake key stakeholders’ interviews: MOL, Employers’ organizations, Workers’ organizations, NGOs working on the protection of women migrant workers.
· Carry out focus group discussions with women migrant workers, with family members and/or male migrant workers to highlight any differences or similarities.
4 Terms of Contract for Consultant
The service provider will be responsible for all expected outputs mentioned in the terms of reference.
5 Timeline and budget Breakdown
Starting date 22 March, 2021
End date 11 May, 2021
The consultant will work for a total of 60 working days.
6 Qualifications required:
***Education*:** Advanced degree in economics, labour migration, public policy, law, sociology, or other relevant discipline.
***Experience*:** A minimum of 5 years of work experience in field of labour migration or international migration with demonstrated experience in research on gender equality and women’s empowerment during the migration process. Proven experience in carrying out analytical work on women migrant workers or in public policy, in particular on labour migration policies, laws, and trends, preferably with the International Labour Office. Strong knowledge of international labour standards on migrant workers (the Migration for Employment Convention (Revised), 1949 (No. 97), and the Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143), the Migration for Employment Recommendation (Revised), 1949 (No. 86), and the Migrant Workers Recommendation, 1975 (No. 151) and the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers) is required.
Languages: Excellent command of English and French.
7 Reporting
The consultant will report to Ms. Gloria Moreno Fontes (mfontes@ilo.org ), ILO’s Regional Labour Migration Specialist for Africa, who will coordinate with MIGRANT in HQ and share it broadly with other ILO Departments. The ILO will be the leading agency responsible for incorporating inputs and comments and validation of the deliverable.
[1] Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe.
[2] UNCTAD: Economic Development in Africa Report 2018: Migration for Structural Transformation, United Nations, 2018.
[3] ITUC-AFRICA (2018) African Labour Migration to the GCC States: The Case of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. An African Trade Union Overview, p.3. UNDESA (2017) International migrant stock: The 2017 revision. Available at:**
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/estimates2/estimates17.shtml
[4] Eritrea (27,000), Nigeria (26,000), South Sudan (20,000), Somalia (14,500), Morocco (13,700), Tunisia (9,000), and Chad (7,500).
[5] ILO Policy Advisory Committee on Fair Migration in the Middle East, Note for Policymakers, Interregional dialogues on migration involving countries in the Middle East and Africa, 2018.
[6] ITUC-AFRICA (2018) African Labour Migration to the GCC States: The Case of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. An African Trade Union Overview
[7] General Security data 2016-18, unpublished.
[8] The definition set out in Article 1 of the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190) should be used. The background white report for the ILC may provide some info on violence against MW and we could include this.
How to apply:
Applicants should send their resume, cover letter, three writing samples, and three references as well as daily rate to the International Labour Organization, Ms. Gloria Moreno (mfontes@ilo.org) by March 15, 2021.