The 2007 Foreign Employment Act banned gender-based discrimination against women who want to work abroad. It eased restrictions that barred women from seeking foreign employment and adopted special measures to secure women’s security and rights while seeking jobs out of the country.

Women’s rights activists, backed by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, pushed through the legislation but the Act’s implementation has proved tricky. Earlier this year in August, in the wake of countless stories of the widespread abuse of female Nepali migrant workers, the government banned women below the age of 30 from seeking employment in the Gulf.

The ban, it was hoped, would prevent Nepali women from going to the Gulf and thus, halt the routine mental, physical and sexual exploitation that they face while in harrowing working conditions. But thanks to legal loopholes and alternate—albeit illegal—routes through India, many Nepali women continued to seek work as domestic helpers and by 2010, an estimated 20,000 Nepali women were working in Lebanon alone, with another 12,000 in Israel. The government realised that the cases being reported in the papers were only the tip of an iceberg and, unable to control the situation, banned all women under 30 from working in the Gulf.

That decision rightly came under attack from many human rights watchdogs, including Human Rights Watch, who claim that the ban does not resolve the problem but instead, discriminates against young women. Unsurprisingly, recent data since the ban was imposed shows that women’s migration has skyrocketed despite the age bar. According to the Department of Foreign Employment, the number of women going abroad for work almost tripled to 6,184 in the last fiscal period compared to the same period last year which saw 2,184 women leaving for foreign employment. The Department estimates that a further 30 to 40 women are heading to the Gulf on a daily basis via New Delhi and Mumbai. Clearly, the ban is not working to dissuade women from seeking employment opportunities abroad. Instead, with the ban in place, women migrant workers below 30 are compelled to seek illegal paths to foreign employment.

As Human Rights Watch suggested, the Nepal government should focus its energies on improving protection for migrant workers by monitoring and ensuring the accountability of recruitment agencies. At the same time, the host countries need to adopt long-overdue labour protection and immigration reforms to end discriminatory treatment of migrant workers, especially female domestic workers. The Nepali government needs to crack down on abusive recruitment practices, make sure women have enforceable contracts and liase with embassies and host governments to ensure quick response to exploitation and abuse. As the Nepali government is set to sign labour agreements with six new countries—Malaysia, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon—it should lift the ban on women migrating to the Gulf and instead, work on agreements with these countries to ensure the protection of Nepali migrant labourers.

Published on: 21 November 2012 | The Kathmandu Post