“You must iron my clothes and make my food whenever I like and whatever I like. . . you must care for me. . . you are here to do the housework. . . otherwise it’s no use keeping you here.”
These are the chilling instructions one woman was given after commencing domestic work in Australia, and is just one of the stories contained in a 2014 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology.1
Domestic slavery takes many forms: 16-hour days without breaks, violence and threats and little or no pay. In short, it’s when private homes become prisons that people cannot leave.
By their very nature, these abuses happen behind closed doors – and many Australians do not realize it happens in their own country. But if we come together, we can make domestic slavery an urgent priority, and spur the Government of Australia to take immediate action to ensure no domestic worker is enslaved here.
There are an estimated 54,000 domestic workers in Australia.2 By taking swift action now, we can help protect every one of these workers from the nightmare of modern slavery.
Anna R.,
Maureen D.,
Yemisi R.,
Anita M.,
Sarah D.,
zeynep t.,
Ron M.,
Sounds like the host countries are being VERY WEAK in protecting workers coming to their shores.
These domestic workers should be protected at all cause no matter and diplomatic immunity should be disregarded and overruled when it comes to such cases. Individuals who abuse their powers should be held reliable and given strict guidelines on how to treat their employees with dignity and respect. New reforms and regulations should be implemented sooner than later to protect these workers.
as an activist in Morocco , we are traying to help a lot all migrant workers we even succeded to force our gouvernement to issue many laws on the befinifit of the migrant workers especially domestic workers . Morocco has announced the amnesty two times we got the law bill 19/12 for the recuitment of domestic workers bill 17/14 for human traficking , but still we can not combat yet the illegal agencies especialy for the filipino workers because they are protected by the philippines embassy