openDemocracy

Senegal failing to tackle misogyny amid growing violence against women
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Senegal failing to tackle misogyny amid growing violence against women

“If you ever have sex with a physically disabled woman, you will break the legs of any woman you sleep with next,” reads a post in Homme Choc, a private Facebook group set up by men in Senegal. The group, whose name is French for ‘shocking men’, was launched in 2019, in response to Femme…

Migrant workers: Qatar still to answer for mass wage theft
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Migrant workers: Qatar still to answer for mass wage theft

In conversation, Indian migrant workers to Qatar confirmed this account to me. They were laid off and repatriated without clearing their end-of-service benefits and unpaid salaries following the Covid-19 outbreak. Migrants rights NGOs, meanwhile, catalogued case after case of wage theft happening to migrant workers in Qatar, the wider Gulf, and other major destination countries….

Borders & Belonging: Human smuggling or human trafficking? Why the difference matters
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Borders & Belonging: Human smuggling or human trafficking? Why the difference matters

Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many…

Migrant workers still paying off debts that brought them to Qatar
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Migrant workers still paying off debts that brought them to Qatar

To recover this outlay, the survey found that men need to spend at least 18 months earning money in Qatar before they break even. Women need around six months. If they are sent home too early, or if they fail to earn enough while there, they will return to debts that they will struggle to…

Death in Qatar, but no just compensation for families back home
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Death in Qatar, but no just compensation for families back home

Her husband, Kashiram Belbase, had made plywood forms to contain the concrete being poured for the Doha Metro, a gleaming mass transit that now ferries fans to the stadiums. One evening in March 2015, after returning to the labour camp after a 13-hour day, he had dinner and went to bed, as usual. “At 12…

COP27 is over – what next?
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COP27 is over – what next?

The Sharm El-Sheikh COP27 climate summit concluded last week after two weeks of tense discussions with world leaders. Well past the agreed deadline, talks eventually resulted in a historic agreement on loss and damage, which places the responsibility on wealthier states to provide financial assistance to poorer states facing the immediate impacts of the climate…

The other Albanian migrant crisis
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The other Albanian migrant crisis

All of this poses a puzzle: if legal emigration to other destinations is a possibility, why is there such desperation to reach the UK? And why now? One explanation relates to chain migration and the UK’s labour shortages. The UK hosts a large diaspora from Albania’s poorest region, Kukes County. That attracts relatives and acquaintances…

Should aid agencies set their sights on modern slavery?
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Should aid agencies set their sights on modern slavery?

Given that this is the nub of it, it is wholly bizarre that the global estimates barely mentions the Forced Labour Protocol, an international law agreed in 2014. Because this protocol answers that very question. The Forced Labour Protocol is about several things. But at its heart, it requires those governments that ratify it to…

Detention centres, not rubber dinghies, are the modern-day slave ships
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Detention centres, not rubber dinghies, are the modern-day slave ships

‘View yon vessel, with sails expanded, ploughing the deep – Contemplate for a moment the scene which it exhibits – Within that receptacle of human misery, are contained hundreds of beings, possessing passions and feelings congenial to thine own’ – William Belsham, 1790 In May 1788, Sir William Dolben, one of two MPs for Oxford…

The UK government is undermining decades of anti-slavery efforts
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The UK government is undermining decades of anti-slavery efforts

More broadly, framing slavery as something which people lie about to gain an advantage will affect the way in which victims are treated, and categorising slavery as an immigration matter risks changing the understanding of who can be trafficked. It makes it less likely that UK nationals will be identified, or that they will engage…