December 19, 2008
The following report was filed by the International Organization for Migration one week ago.
Eight Nepalese migrants lured to Iraq by the promise of a well-paid job and left stranded on arrival without work, money or documents, have returned home today with IOM's assistance.
The men are being taken back to their homes where, depending on IOM obtaining sufficient funding and individual needs, they will be given reintegration assistance.
The Nepalese migrants were part of a larger group of about 60 Bangladeshi, Indian, Sri Lankan and Nepalese men found camping out on roadsides near Baghdad's airport in a desperate situation. Their plight and those of about 1,000 other migrants in a similar situation at warehouses nearby, has highlighted again the need for greater protection of migrant workers.
All the migrants had borrowed money, or sold off land, businesses or homes to pay up to USD 3,000 to middlemen for jobs in Iraq in the belief that they would earn much higher salaries there.
Some of the migrants living by the roadside have no shelter and are covering themselves up with whatever they can find lying around as winter begins to hit the country. Others are living in tents or containers but all are without basic amenities such as water and electricity and most are dependent on ad hoc food assistance.
The men have now been in Iraq for nearly five months, many without a job or income during that time. Those who have found jobs themselves, mainly as cleaners or doing other service labour, are in a vulnerable situation as they are working without papers.
Some men have asked IOM for assistance to return home during two assessment missions to the groups of migrants at the roadside and at the warehouse where migrants are unable to leave the site and have had their passports confiscated.
However, many of the migrants who have asked IOM's assistance have changed their minds afterwards fearing the pressure of debt they have incurred getting to Iraq and shame at returning home with nothing.
"Their situation is a telling one as it illustrates what is at stake for these men who have given up so much. They want to go home, but they feel they can't because they would have no means of paying off the huge debts they have incurred," says Rafiq Tschannen, IOM Chief of Mission for Iraq. "And by staying, they put themselves at risk of exploitation and abuse. It is important that we get adequate funding to not only help them return home but also provide them with reintegration assistance that can help them get lives back on track."
Since 2007, the Organization has been assisting migrants who became victims of human trafficking in Iraq, or who ended up in exploitative situations, with their voluntary return home along with medical or reintegration support when needed.
The higher wages being paid for migrant labour in Iraq where insecurity and violence has led to a shortage of a stable pool of workers among nationals has attracted workers from Asia as well as some African countries to Iraq. However, the need for migrant labour has encouraged human smuggling and trafficking as well as the abuse of migrants by recruitment companies.
For Nepali migrant workers, it can also be lethal.
The Washington Post filed a story on August 28, 2008, which implicates a U.S. company in the savage murders of a dozen innocent Nepali men. The story reports of a lawsuit filed by a Washington law firm, which alleges that KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor engaged in the human trafficking of Nepali workers.
KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) is an American engineering and construction company, formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton, based in Houston. After Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries in 1998, Dresser's engineering subsidiary, The M. W. Kellogg Co., was merged with Halliburton's construction subsidiary, Brown & Root, to form Kellogg Brown & Root. KBR and its predecessors have won many contracts with the U.S. military during and since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
From the Washington Post: Agnieszka Fryszman, a partner at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, said 13 Nepali men, between the ages of 18 and 27, were recruited in Nepal to work as kitchen staff in hotels and restaurants in Amman, Jordan. But once the men arrived in Jordan, their passports were seized and they were told they were being sent to a military facility in Iraq, Fryszman said.
As the men were driven in cars to Iraq, they were stopped by insurgents. Twelve were kidnapped and later executed, Fryszman said. The thirteenth man survived and worked in a warehouse in Iraq for 15 months before returning to Nepal.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California on behalf of the workers' families and the survivor, claims that the trafficking scheme was engineered by KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, according to Fryszman.
ad_icon
This spring, an administrative law judge at the Department of Labor, which has jurisdiction over cases that involve on the job injuries at overseas military bases, ordered Daoud to pay $1 million to the families of 11 of the victims.
For further information on the International Organization for Migration (IOM), contact:
Rafiq Tschannen
IOM Iraq
Tel: +962 79 624 4887
E-mail: [email protected]
or
Jean-Philippe Chauzy
IOM Geneva
Tel: + 41 79 285 4366
E-mail: [email protected]
....................................................................