Empowering Sri Lankan Female Workers at Foreign Countries

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to view and examine the various challenges encountered by the Sri Lankan female workers who work in the Foreign Countries as domestic-aid and to explore how these female workers contribute to the development of Sri Lanka. The paper will examine the various violations of International Law with regards to these female workers and ways to avoid such violations by empowering them. Sri Lankan females choose to work as unskilled laborers and seek job opportunities in Foreign Countries, especially in the Middle Eastern countries for the past three decades. There is a progressive increase in the number of female workers who leave Sri Lanka annually and they contribute to bringing in the highest amount of foreign currency to the country’s economy. The career journey of these female workers is full of obstacles, challenges and difficulties. Since most of females leave their families behind, they risk possible harms to their children left back, family disruptions, deprivation of education for these children and risk of child labor or abuse from current guardians of them. The female worker will also face lack of social and occupational security, lack of recognition, wage discrimination and most importantly difficulties in access to justice. Thus, this can be seen as significant violation of their human rights. The literature affirms that there were many cases where Sri Lankan female workers had to face refusal of payments, violation of their employment contract, physical and mental assault, sexual assaults, and sometimes even death. Sri Lanka is a member of various international treaties and therefore must find means to protect the civil and economic rights of these female workers. The paper recommends that Sri Lanka ought to imply strong policies, international agreements and national laws in order to safeguard the human rights of these female workers. The existing national laws are insufficient since the human rights of these females are violated frequently. The International laws will provide and protect the female workers and the children left behind, but the existing Sri Lankan system fails to achieve this. This paper recommends domestic laws, policies, and, practices which can be implemented to offer solutions to address the key concerns