International Organization for Migrations & women migrant workers

International Organization for Migration (IOM) was established in 1951 and is an inter-governmental organization that manages migration issues and provide aids for migrants and governments around the world.

In this moment it has 127 members. IOM works to help ensure the orderly and human management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people. (IOM, 2010).

IOM works in the four broad areas of migration management:

• Migration and development
• Facilitating migration
• Regulating migration
• Forced migration.

Almost half of the total number of migrant workers in the world today are women, the IOM has a special treatment because they are considered more vulnerable than other migrants, most of them leave their origin countries leaving behind their families, they children and their stability.

When they arrive to the new countries they will be established, they found that to be and to work there is not as easy as they thought, and the majority end up working in low-skilled or sexual jobs. they do not have access to social security and everything becomes more difficul when they do not have even ID cards.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), through its gender policy,is committed to ensuring the particular needs of all migrant women around the world, IOM watches over the human rights of these women, because they are vulnerable to discrimination, sexual abuse and labour exploitation.

Some of the objectives of this policy are:

• Protecting women migrant workers from sexual and gender-based violence,
  domestic violence, abusive labour practices and discrimination.
• Addressing women migrant workers’ disproportionate labour market discrimination.
• Addressing gendered forms of racism and xenophobia against women migrant
  workers.
• Promoting the physical and mental health and well-being of women migrant workers.

IOM has created programs for these women to teach them new languages, new tasks, new habilities and to give them psychological support. And in this way, make them easier the adaptation processes to the new culture in the country they will be.

IOM helps these women with legal advice if they need it, because some of them turn to low-skilled jobs because they do not have ID´s or in the worst scenario, they are deported.

The job of the IOM is very importan because it prepares women and migrants in general to adapt to their new life abroad, and it gives them tools such as employment and cultural orientation to face all kind of situations they can stumble with during the process. it goes with them and their families during all the process.

Here, I let you a video in which you can see a testimony of a girl who is a migrant and the role of the IOM in his process.

References:

International Organization for Migrants, IOM - About IOM." IOM. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/about-iom/lang/en.

ACNUR, IOM, (2009), Working to prevent and Adress violence against women migrant workers. 16 Oct. 2010 . http://www.acnur.org/t3/fileadmin/Documentos/nuevo_sitio/2010/conferencia/3.%20Background%20Information%20on%20Mixed%20Migration/Respecting%20the%20Human%20Rights%20of%20People%20on%20the%20Move/IOM%20-%20Working%20to%20Prevent%20and%20Address%20Violence%20Against%20Women%20Migrant%20Workers.pdf