Jakarta Post - 29 October 2012. Indonesia’s 4 million overseas migrant workers and their families are underserved by formal financial services and possess limited levels of financial literacy. Improving not only access to formal financial services, such as savings, credit, remittance and insurance products, but also awareness of these products and the skills necessary to use them, could greatly improve the well-being of migrant workers’ households.
Bangkok Post - 14 October 2012. The future remains uncertain for many Cambodian workers seeking jobs in Thailand. Most feel the process of gaining employment in the country is akin to playing the lottery, with exploitation in the job placement industry rife, and legal protection scarce.
The Irawaddy - 16 October 2012. About 200,000 illegal Burmese migrant workers are among some 400,000 illegal foreign workers who are due to be deported back to their respected countries in December this year, according to a report by the Bangkok Post, a Thailand-based newspaper.
The Peninsula - 2 October 2012. Manpower agencies in Qatar are pressing the government to make it mandatory for private companies to recruit unskilled and semi-skilled foreign workers through them to help end problems like the sale of work visas by some firms and workers running away from their sponsors.
The Nation - 28 September 2012. On Wednesday, the HSRI, Mahidol University's Institute for Population and Social Research, Silpakorn University's anthropology department and the Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (Path) presented their research results on the estimated migrant population and their assessment of migrant mother and child care in Bangkok.
Sunday Observer - 23 September 2012. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) will offer short-term skills and social welfare training for prospective Sri Lankan migrant workers with the opening of its first Pre-Orientation Departure Centre at Airport Junction, Katunayake.
Muscat Daily - 19 September 2012. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) plans to create awareness among domestic workers on what to do in the event of a human rights violation by their employer.
The Nation - 17 September 2012. A new book "Thailand's Hidden Workforce" (Zed Books, 2012) delves into the lives of the women migrants who toil 15 hours a day in garment factories on the Thai-Myanmar border.
The Nation - 12 September 2012. The UAE and the Philippines are hoping to this year sign an amended labour agreement that conforms to both countries' laws.
VOA - 11 September 2012. Millions of Burmese migrant workers have long sought economic opportunity abroad, but their life in exile frequently means working outside the law, in risky or dangerous jobs.
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Rappler.com - 11 September 2012. The Philippine economy can only become less dependent on Overseas Fillipino Workers (OFWs) remittances but not completely independent from it.
VERA files - 10 September 2012. The 10-member countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations today host at least five million migrant workers originating from the region, many of them employed in a few yet economically well-endowed countries in the region but with stories of abuse and misery to tell. This article examines regional progress towards the creation of an instrument to enforce the 2007 ASEAN Declaration on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers.
migrant-rights.org - 9 September 2012. Nepal and the Philippines recently announced intentions to reduce labor migration to the Gulf. Nepal will begin prohibiting female under the age of 30 from migrating to the region, while the Philippines is seeking to gradually terminate domestic worker migration to all nations over the next five years. This commentary questions how effective such 'bans' can be in protecting domestic workers.
UN News Centre - 5 September 2012. A United Nations treaty which provides a set of international standards to improve the lives of millions of domestic workers worldwide has now been ratified by a second Member State, the Philippines, allowing it to come into force next year, the world body announced today.
M4D - 27 August 2012. The EC-UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative (JMDI) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Observatory on Migration are currently running an e-discussion on the 'Promotion of an Increased Attention to South-South Migration and Development'. The discussion runs until September 4, 2012.
