UNIFEM's engagement with the issue of migration in the Asia-Pacific and the Arab region commenced with UNIFEM Delhi's work in Srilanka in 1997. UNIFEM organized several roundtables with key stakeholder s emphasizing a gender and rights-based perspective, thus moving beyond a' helpless victim needs protection approach', that marked work with migrant women workers, including that by several bilateral agencies. At the request of one of these roundtables, a network of institutions working on women migrant workers was set up and UNIFEM was requested to support a Sri Lankan NGO CENWOR to conduct research on trends in women's migration and to establish a documentation center that would facilitate the ongoing network in information sharing on women's migration. UNIFEM was also requested to open up dialogue in receiving countries, i.e. Jordan as UNIFEM had a regional office there .

Following and building on this, UNIFEM Asia-Pacific and Arab States launched its Regional Programme on Empowering Women Migrant Workers in Asia. This Programme is also being implemented against a background of :

• Increasing migration for work in the recent context of globalization.

• Changing trends in overseas migration, a new feature being its feminization.

• The recruitment of women primarily into lower skilled jobs in the informal manufacturing and service sectors as domestic workers, entertainers, cleaners, factory workers where they suffer gross human rights violation.

• The qualitative difference in the migration experience of men and women, circumscribed by class, ethnic, nationality and gender inequities, with women suffering greater discrimination and bearing a heavier burden.

The Programme focuses on poor women migrating legally overseas, with a special focus on domestic workers .

The Programme seeks to empower women migrant workers from a gender and rights-based perspective. This will be done by helping create enabling policy, Institutional and socio-economic environments to ensure women equality of opportunity, access to resources and benefits at all stages of the migration process.

Objectives

• To promote gender responsive migration policies, legislation and programmes that further the realization of women's rights

• To strengthen the capacity of women migrant workers and their organization to access and claim their rights

• To promote sustained policy dialogue between source and destination countries to empower migrant workers

• To pilot innovative reintegration projects

Strategies

• Advocacy and capacity building

• Promoting sustained dialogue and multi-stakeholder collaboration within and between source and destination countries;

• Piloting innovative strategies; and Facilitating cross country and regional learnings.

Overall, the achievements of the UNIFEM Regional Programme on Empowering Women Migrant Workers in Asia conforms with the mission of the AGFUND by supporting sustainable human development for migrant workers, targeting one of the neediest groups in developing countries, particularly women, and facilitating cooperation among a wide variety of relevant organizations and institutions.
 

CHILDLINE project is a national 24-hour free phone emergency outreach service for children in need of care and protection, linking children to long-term services. CHILDLINE aims at responding to every child in need of care and protection throughout the country and ensuring that there is an integrated effort between governmental and non-governmental organizations in protecting the rights of children.

The projects was officially inaugurated as an experimental project in June 1996. It was to be a phone helpline exclusively for children where they could coil in for anything, anytime and from anywhere in Mumbal. The projects' overall objectives are as follows:

• To reach out to every child in need of care and protection by responding to emergencies on 1098.

• To provide a platform of networking amongst organizations and to provide linkages to support systems that facilitate the rehabilitation of children in need of care and protection.

• To work together with the Allied Systems (Police, Health Care, Juvenile Justice, Transport, Legal, Education, Communication, Media, Political and the Community) to create child friendly systems.

• To advocate for services for children that are inaccessible, non-existent or inadequate.To create a family of NGOs and Government organizations working within the framework of a national vision and policy for children.

Currently operational in 53 cities of India spread across 19 states with a vision to reach out to every child in distress in each city/district of India it, aims to be operational in all 596 districts of India by 2015.

Nationally CHILDLINE service until February 2003 has responded to over 3.5 million calls from children, the largest number of calls received by any helplin e , in India. These calls range from medical assistance, shelter, protection from abuse, repatriation, emotional support and guidance, calls for information about services for children or just calls to speak to someone who cares.

The success of CHILDLINE'S operation lies in the adaptation of innovative technology to the needs of the voluntary sector. Its successful merger of grass roots micro level intervention with information technology and telecommunications enables CHILDLINE to serve as an efficient link between the child and the system.

The national CFI network comprises 150 partner organizations supported by over 600 resource organizations. The CHILDLINE crisis team across the country comprises 1200 members supported by a network of over 5000 child/youth volunteers.

“This project is pioneering in its service type and in adapting modern information and telecommunications technologies to the needs of grassroots populations. It is modern in its multi-sectorial approach. It has already interacted with more than 3 million beneficiaries and is rapidly growing annually”.
 

The Appropriate Technology for Enterprise Creation “ApproTEC” is an international Non-Governmental/Non-Profit Organization (NGO) that was founded in Kenya in July 1991 by Nick Moon and Martin Fisher. Its mission is to promote sustainable economic growth and employment creation in Kenya and other countries by developing and promoting technologies which can be used by dynamic entrepreneurs to establish and run profitable small scale enterprises.

These include manual oil presses for extracting cooking oil from e.g. sunflower, manual block presses for making and selling strong building blocks composed of soil and cement, manual hay balers, extended bicycles for increasing the load carrying capacity of ordinary bicycles, and a range of manually operated micro-irrigation pumps for subsistence farmers who are making the transition to commercial agriculture.

Developing countries in Africa and elsewhere, are moving rapidly from centrally planned and subsistence based economies, to market based cash economies, The poor can no longer grow enough to eat on their small plots of land and, with the ending of cold war subsidies, they need to pay for education, healthcare and a growing number of other commodities and services.

So, just as in the developed world, the biggest need of the poor is money. With money they can feed and educate their children, afford healthcare and housing, plan their families and determine their own destinies. Without it they are caught forever In the downward spiral of poverty.

However, in the poorest countries there are very few jobs or other opportunities for the poor to make money. In Kenya, with 60% of the people living on less than a dollar a day, less than 14% of the labor force has a job in the formal sector; in Tanzania its less than 7%. In both places the labor force is growing but the formal sector is stagnant as investors fear violence and corruption.

The hope for creating new incomes and new jobs is for thousands of motivated local entrepreneurs to start thousands of new, value adding and highly profitable businesses. However, these entrepreneurs face major constraints. The vast majority of them are very poor; they have very limited access to capital, little education and limited experience or exposure to the outside world. However, ApproTEC has demonstrated that for a profitable enough investment, even the very poorest entrepreneurs can find a way to beg, borrow or save a small amount of capital - say between $50 and $1,000 to start a new business. But their biggest challenges are that the vast majority of existing technologies are not useful for poor entrepreneurs who want to establish new small businesses in developing countries. And since it is difficult and expensive to sell new big-ticket items to poor people in poor countries, almost no one is developing and marketing any new low-cost tools and machines for the poor. This is a classic “market failure”. In the developed world governments subsidize R&D to promote useful new technologies (grants to universities & industry) but in developing countries there is almost no expenditure on technology development.

Through their non-profit organization ApproTEC, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon has been able to develop and promote, through existing market channels, technologies that are designed to fit the social and economic circumstances of the poor, and that enable them to increase productivity and household incomes. Some 30,000 micro-enterprises now use ApproTEC technologies to generate over $32 million in new profits each year.
 

INTEGRATED PROJECT FOR PROTECTION AND WELFARE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN NUWAKOT DISTRICT

“The Initiative Prize” is a prize amounting to US$ 40,000, approved by the Committee of AGFUND Prize, to be awarded to the " Integrated Project for Protection and Welfare of Women and Children in Nuwakot District", Implemented in Nepal, Planet by Enfants, Nepali NGOs Kakani Community Development Center (KCDC) , Society of Ex-Budahnilkantha Students (SEBS)

The Project was selected for the Initiative Prize in recognition of its activities in addressing a major abuse problem, empowering women and children and upgrading their status.

Having considered the state of affairs, local needs and the root cause of the problem of girl trafficking; the project emphasizes on establishing a precise data base, promoting education, awareness and income generating activities.

The project emphasizes on the preventive approach to the issue of girl trafficking and various other forms of exploitation, especially that of children and women. The different activities of the project addresses socio-economic reasons like illiteracy, poverty, discrimination etc. known to be the root causes behind different forms of exploitation.

Poverty, lack of education & awareness, hardship of life style, discrimination towards women, lack of alternative economic activities, lucrative profit for the traffickers are some of the major factors contributing towards the causes of girl trafficking for prostitution. Like for instance, a considerable number of girls are said to have been sold for prostitution abroad with the consent of their parents. The aforementioned factors also have innumerable negative effects towards development of women and girl children in Nepal.

To eliminate this state of ignorance, poverty, discrimination and state of under-development and the negative aspects that has arisen due to these factors, the project consists of various programmes with long term impact both to tight trafficking and as a development programme as well like:

• Census & Registration Programme

• Awareness Programmes

• Programme of Scholarship for y oung Girls.

• Programme of Income Generating Skill Training for Young Women

Each specific activity of the project aims to have women educated; vocationally trained; sensitized of relevant issues, economically active. Such outcomes aimed to create chances of better lives and raise awareness to meet the objectives.

The project is innovative in the way that it addresses its objectives in a preventive way by implementing different relevant activities that been the causes behind the problem. The first activity and the most innovative is birth registration of girls to provide them an official identity and a protection against trafficking. Planéte Enfants started birth registration in 1998 which was one of the first country were activity has been implemented by NGOs in the world.

The project combats victimization of women and children by empowering them and making them aware of their vulnerability the risks involved.

Through education of girls the project addresses 2 generations and lays a strong foundation for the later generation to eliminate the problem altogether.

In short, the project aims to prevent girl trafficking from the target area, empower and upgrade the status of women and end sexual discrimination; it also targets to prepare basis for sustained economic development.

This Project is addressing a major abuse problem- the trafficking of girls. It is integrated in nature and apparently efficient in the delivery of services.

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