Basahin ang artikulong ito sa wikang Tagalog
Both authors are survivors of human trafficking. In this joint article, we speak as ‘we’ when we share a view, and refer to ourselves as Saharah and Wendy when reflecting on our separate lived experiences.
As people who have survived trafficking as domestic workers, we face double barriers to the lives we want to lead: first at the hands of traffickers, and second when we face suspicion – or even re-traumatisation – at the hands of the services that are meant to support us. These barriers can be fatal, and they need to be broken.
We recently co-produced research on what happens to domestic worker survivors of trafficking after they return to their country of origin, in this case the Philippines. We found that they face many of the same hurdles as survivors of trafficking in the UK.
In both countries, survivors struggle to access support. Of the 22 people we interviewed in the Philippines, 73% had not received any support from the government or NGOs since their return. As a result, many were unable to afford basic costs like food, healthcare, and education. “Sometimes I borrow food just to have a meal for a day,” one said.
The tripwires of bureaucracy
Exclusion from services often has to do with not ticking the right boxes. With not being believed. Many interviewees described how they were unable to access support because they couldn’t produce the documentation required to prove their case.
Animor, who had been trafficked to Saudi Arabia, said her employer frequently refused to give her food. Her weight dropped from 71 to 46 kilograms, yet her employers did not allow her to see a doctor. She said she was told to mask the pain with Panadol.
Animor ended the contract two months early and returned home. Once back, she applied for support for her hospital fees from the government’s Overseas Workers Welfare Agency (OWWA). This is possible to get. But, because she had been denied healthcare, she didn’t have the necessary medical certificates to prove she’d become ill from overwork and malnutrition abroad.
Animor died shortly thereafter at 47 years old, unable to afford the treatment she needed.
After she interviewed Animor, Wendy reported what happened to her to the OWWA, and explained the situation her family was now in due to her death. After Wendy’s intervention, OWWA case workers went to see Animor’s family in their village. Family members told us that they demanded copies of her birth, marriage and death certificates. These are costly to produce, in part because it requires travelling to the city to process the papers. The family doesn’t have the money to do this, but OWWA won’t provide support until it gets the paperwork. To date, they haven’t received any money. Not even a contribution to Animor’s burial fee.
I survived exploitation as a domestic worker. But I don’t know if I can survive the system the UK has created to ‘help’ me
Bureaucratic hurdles, which might seem like reasonable due diligence to those who don’t have to jump them, can be impossible to clear for those in search of safety. Here in the UK, we’ve both encountered support services that turned us away because we were unable to provide the proof they required.
This is because, as domestic workers, we work behind closed doors. No one but the employers see what we endure, and they often confiscate our phones – removing the tools we need to collect evidence. To make matters worse, it’s only after the fact that we learn what sort of evidence we should have been collecting. We receive no information about our rights upon arrival. We aren’t trained on how to document exploitation before we experience it. And when we finally escape, we don’t know who to trust.
Given the circumstances, it’s a minor miracle that anybody manages to get support.
A survivor of what?
Saharah escaped from her employers without money, phone, or any idea of where to go. When she finally contacted an NGO, they told her they believed she’d been “exploited” but not “trafficked”. They refused her support without even meeting her in person.
“I had to Google the word ‘exploited,’” Saharah explained. “I didn’t know what that meant. All I knew was that I couldn’t survive it any longer.”
Providing proof that we are part of one category and not the other when the words don’t even make sense of our experience is dehumanising. Saharah would have been street homeless if a hostel porter hadn’t allowed her to sleep in the hostel reception until she received government support. The Home Office, by the way, disagreed with the NGO’s assessment. Saharah is now a recognised victim of human trafficking.
Wendy wants to know: “Can I call myself a survivor? I survived exploitation and abusive employers as a domestic worker. But I don’t know if I can survive the system the UK has created to ‘help’ me.”
Saharah agrees: “The Philippine government treated us as commodities. The employers who trafficked us treated us as slaves. But now we are in the UK, and the barriers to recovery are excruciating.”
Meanwhile, our former employers – the perpetrators of abuse – are free.
Humanity denied
We are more than just victims of trafficking, but the system doesn’t recognise that we are also mothers, partners, sisters, activists, skilled workers, citizens. Our lives are about more than trauma, but this system strips many of us of the freedom to work, build loving relationships, or live where we want to. As migrant domestic workers, our work is needed. We make a vital contribution to society. But we get nothing in return.
We need more flexible systems that respect survivors and our experiences. Authorities and services need specialised training, so that they can recognise the “special vulnerability” experienced by domestic workers in private homes. The vulnerability that exposes us to abuse while making it difficult to prove what happened.
We also need to be listened to, so that we can build up mutual trust with the authorities and services tasked with supporting us. And we want paperwork requirements to be designed in ways that help us meet them, rather than having them weaponised against us.
We will call ourselves survivors when we can live without barriers and with equal rights, when we can work and also be with our families, and when we can share what we’ve learnt with our communities.
We don’t need to change for this vision to become reality: but the system does.
The Voice of Domestic Workers is a support network and campaign group run by and for domestic workers, and provides assistance and information for domestic workers experiencing exploitation and abuse. Get in contact with the organisation here.
