With the tales of human rights abuses, violations and exploitations of African migrant workers, CHRISTIAN APPOLOS writes on the efforts of trade unions in Africa towards changing the narrative.
Trade unions in Africa are deconstructing negative perceptions of migration on the continent by addressing contextual realities and bringing to light practical interventions and evidence-based knowledge on what is happening on the ground.
Every year, many young African men and women risk everything, including their lives, to take on the dangerous trip across dozens of borders and the treacherous waves of the Mediterranean Sea in search of the proverbial greener pastures. Some die along the way, some are turned back and some who finish the journey realise that life may not be easier across the frontier.
Many who return do so with sad tales of human rights abuses and exploitations. But as unemployment, conflicts and poverty increase within the continent, millions of youths and young adults in Africa still choose to migrate, often clandestinely.
And as Europe shut its borders and deployed stricter migration policies, desperate migrants from Africa turned to desperate measures, taking the dangerous routes to get to Europe.
Others turned to the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC). But there, they found even more violations of their rights in the hands of recruiters and employers.
While their national government boasted about the millions of dollars in diaspora remittances, many of the concerns of the migrant workers were left unattended to by their governments.
But as the abuses and exploitation became more intense and fuelled by the refusal of heads of governments to domesticate and implement standards set by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) for the protection of these migrants, trade unions needed to step into the arena. They realised that they had to reorder their priorities to include migration engagement.
“Before now, migration was rather on a bit of the blind side for trade unions who ordinarily are overwhelmed with the day-to-day engagement in the world of work around issues of working and living conditions,” says Comrade Joel Odige, Deputy General Secretary of ITUC-AFRICA.
The African regional body of the International Trade Union Confederation, where Odige is Deputy General Secretary, has led a conscious awakening of trade unions within the African continent in their obligation of protecting rights of vulnerable migrant workers.
Odige explained how and why trade unions needed to get involved.
“Before the outbreak of COVID-19 at the point where migration issues began to shape national politics, around the time where the narratives were around extremist lines. At the point nationalism and xenophobia were undermining and defining migration governance; at the time where politicians especially from the far right were riding at the back of populism and very lazy alternatives, and were exploiting the negative migration narratives to get into power. The trade unions took it upon themselves to begin to engage.
“It was also at a time where attacks on migrant and migrant workers were high. It was at a time where desperate and dangerous movements began to scale at an alarming proportion
“Immediately Libya fell, the whole thing changed and so the trade unions had to step into the arena. And of course they have done so consciously with the realisation that indeed, they have not prioritised migration engagement well enough. Because these persons that are moving, besides being humans, they are workers. And they are members and potential members of the trade unions
“And it is incumbent on the trade unions as a labour and human rights defender to step into the arena to begin to engage in a better way how we should help to improve the governance of migration.
“Of course, the trade unions have also done so on the realisation that of course migration is a natural human phenomenon. It is never going to stop and the idea is not to stop it. The idea is to make it humane to benefit everybody, including the migrants themselves. And more importantly, the essence of humanity should continue. This is why the trade unions have stepped into the arena.”
How Trade unions dealt with migration as an emerging issue
About a decade back, migration was an emerging issue, a new area of engagement for trade unions and capacity was lacking, especially at national level.
But as the popular saying goes, if you want solutions, you must get involved. This is how trade unions in Africa have related to the growing number of migrant workers being exploited.
“We also noted that if we want to make any improvement, we must look at these issues from the point of what solutions we are providing. And we made the point clearly that we cannot lament, we must not frame our issues along the contents of problems. That will leave us merely lamenting,” James Eustace of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said.
Odige added that “We have asked ourselves, ‘how do we frame it, recognising the issues, but providing solutions, pragmatic alternatives and more importantly, demonstrating that these pragmatic alternatives work.’
“There was the realisation that if you must do this, the issues are ever changing, they are dynamic, then you need a focused engagement. To build a focused engagement, the trade unions created a network. That was how the African Trade Union Migration Network (ATUMNET) came into being.”
ATUMNET became a network where focal persons from trade unions in each country were selected for active participation and capacity building
Having brought these persons together under the umbrella of ATUMNET, the next agenda was then to design an action plan.
“What is it we want to do? What are the issues? Where are our capacities, where are the gaps. If we can understand and locate our gaps, how do we fill them?” Odige noted the union as asking.
On the strength of the SWOT analysis, the trade union movement went to work and started to build capacity of the focal persons to be able to engage to change the narratives.
“We said, ‘look we need to build capacity.’ Capacity for policy formulation, to be able to contribute to policy formulation; capacity for policy analysis and then capacity to monitor and for the implementation of the policies and programmes that will be imposed at the national level,” Odige added.
For the next four years, this became the focus for trade unions – building the capacity to engage at the national, sub-regional, continental and international level.
There is progress
With increasing reports of exploitation of migrant workers by recruiters where many are lied to before they leave their home country, trade unions have actively engaged both at national and continental level for fair recruitment. These engagements have led to significant improvements in recruitment process and reduction in activities of fake recruiters.
“Importantly, we have inserted ourselves into the recruitment process, which has led to sundry results. Now across the continent of Africa, we are seeing some measures of improvement through reforms in the recruitment processes. It is not where we want them to be yet, but clearly, there are steps in that direction as to how it could work,” Odige said on progress at the continental level.
At the national level, trade unions began to engage with government to drive policies, while also providing platforms for migrant workers to speak up.
Achakoma Kenneth Atong of the TUC Ghana also acknowledged that trade unions in Ghana have raised their capacities to be able to address exploitation of migrant workers.
Atong, who is also the focal person of the Ghana TUC at the ATUMNET said, “TUC Ghana, over the past decade, has worked at several levels to ensure that exploitation of migrant workers can be curbed.
“Basically, exploitation happens at different level of migration: at the level of recruitment and at the level where migrants want to reintegrate into the economic structures of host economies. Having realised that, we also work at several levels, at the policy levels, implementation levels or monitoring level.
“We also have our specific action plans looking at the priority areas for the protection of migrant workers. For the TUC, we are focused on the issues of fair recruitment, issues of organising migrant workers to give them voice and we have also been up there in terms of providing information and data.”
He explained further that prior to the adoption of national policy on migration of Ghana in 2016, the TUC Ghana also engaged at the tripartite level to formulate the national migration policy.
“At the policy level, we have been key stakeholders,” Atong said.
In Nigeria, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has led sustained campaigns, which have resulted in an improvement in the labour migration space and ensuring the Nigerian government also ratifies various ILO conventions such as Convention 143 and 181, which guarantee protection of rights of migrant workers.
“NLC’s campaign for fair recruitment migration has really yielded a lot of positive impacts and has prompted the government to wake up to its responsibilities,” James Eustace of the NLC said.
He explained that trade unions were at the forefront of agitation to have a better migration policy framework back in early 2000 that eventually culminated in the adoption of the national policy on labour migration in Nigeria.
Eustace said, “The NLC has been very vocal in the sphere of promoting fair recruitment for migrant workers. And this has led to the revised code for private employment agencies that is in operation today. Also, the labour movement activities in labour migration have led to equally developing the code of conduct and the pre-departure orientation manual, which now also made provision for trade unions and other organisations to conduct pre-departure orientation programmes.”
Collaboration works
Odige said, “We recognise that we cannot do this on our own, so we have consciously built alliances. We have built alliance with the media. When we created our network, we brought them in. We built our alliance with Civil Society Organisations. We said, ‘look, the issues we talk about are the same, and we shouldn’t work in silos or at cross purpose. Rather, let’s come together and collaborate effectively.’
“More importantly, we have recognised that our engagement should not be adversarial with our governments. We should be able to show them how these things can be done. Show them that we are stakeholders and partners in progress by the alternatives we have provided, they have seen it overtime.
“From Nigeria to Sierra Lone, to Guinea and others; they have seen that trade unions have become more knowledgeable on this issue of migration and they are ready to put their knowledge at the disposal of their governments and so, the collaboration and partnership has contributed to changing the narratives.”
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