Refugees and Migrant Workers in Asia – the forgotten victims of Covid-19?
Image Source: Ore Huiying/The New York Times
The Covid-19 pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on the world’s most vulnerable populations – especially migrant workers, and refugees. Yet, the US-China diplomatic spat, and Trump’s ridiculous comments, such as how disinfectant can be injected to treat Covid-19, have dominated headlines. At best, migrants and refugees are given peripheral attention by mainstream media and governments. Before the pandemic, many of us did not have to worry about our health and livelihoods but the virus has amplified this concern for us all, especially for migrants and refugees. This has exposed the extreme disparity between the haves and have-nots. Covid-19 has not only caused a global public health crisis, but also a humanitarian emergency.
The pandemic has revealed underlying structural problems in society that disadvantage and disempower migrant workers and refugees. First, it has exacerbated the unstable nature of their employment and lack of job opportunities. Second, their limited access to basic services – such as healthcare and education – and poor living conditions, has put them at especially high risk of catching the virus. Third, Covid-19 has highlighted the institutional discrimination and neglect they face - and many are now suffering even worse treatment from their host populations and governments. Lastly, the pandemic has aggravated the lack of legal protection for migrants and refugees, such as by enabling many governments to not abide by international human rights laws.
The nature of employment
It is well reported that jobless claims in the US have surpassed 40 million. Yet, Covid-19 has intensified the precariousness of their employment and limited opportunities, employment and otherwise, for migrants and refugees in Asia - pushing many and their families to the brink of extreme poverty. It has not only limited their ability to go to work, to withdraw money from the bank, but also to send remittances to their families. According to the International Organisation for Migration, the hundreds and thousands of jobs lost abroad risk causing millions of families to sink into poverty. Yet, when those migrants do return home, they often cannot find a job and are, as a result, stigmatised. For example, over 80% of migrants that work between Central Asia and Russia have reported either a fall or total loss in income during the pandemic. Hundreds of Central Asians are trying to leave Russia and head home due to the closure of construction sites, factories, and other workplaces that had provided them with a lifeline. They do not have the luxury of working from home and continuing to earn. But thousands of Central Asians hope to remain or move to Russia due to the lack of employment opportunities at home and risk the prospect that their family would starve if they did not work in Russia.
The opportunity to use basic services
Migrants and refugees’ limited access to basic services, and substandard living standards, has made them especially susceptible to Covid-19. For instance, the Rohingya – a stateless ethnic minority, often described as one of the most discriminated people on earth – in Myanmar and Bangladesh refugee camps, are at particular risk. They live in overcrowded and subhuman living conditions, have acute malnutrition, and insufficient access to medical treatment and sanitation. So far, two Rohingya refugees in Cox Bazar – the world’s largest refugee camp in Bangladesh, home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees– have reportedly died from Covid-19. With the camp in Cox Bazar packing over 100,000 people per square mile, Professor Azeem Ibrahim, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Policy, warned that up to 200,000 people could die if Covid-19 infected the camp – “an order of magnitude more than those killed by the Myanmar military”. Unfortunately, social distancing is not a luxury that the Rohingya refugees can afford. Over 80% of the world’s refugees and nearly all internally displaced people are hosted in low and middle-income countries, where healthcare systems are often weak, so their capacity for containing the virus is low.
Image Source: Allison Joyce/Getty Images
Systematic unjust or prejudicial treatment
Covid-19 has magnified the institutional discrimination and neglect that migrants and refugees experience. For example, migrant workers from the countryside who work in big cities in India are ubiquitous, yet invisible. But the rushed lockdown on March 24th has made them more visible than ever. It left millions of migrants dependent on daily wages stranded - without money or food. Thus, many were forced to walk hundreds of kilometres or to hitch rides on lorries to go home. Some collapsed on the way from fatigue and many were run over. Initial government guidelines did not even mention migrant workers. For weeks after lockdown, there was no serious discussion of transporting them to their state of origin nor providing them with financial or humanitarian support. India’s Supreme Court only ordered the government on June 9th to transport displaced migrant workers back home within 15 days and encouraged state governments to withdraw charges against migrant workers who violated lockdown measures.
Image Source: Picture-alliance/NurPhotos/R.Shukla
In contrast, the Indian government arranged special flights to evacuate non-resident Indians, and overseas students, before the lockdown. Class and India’s age-old social hierarchy of caste can explain the ruling elite’s attitude to migrant workers, who are mostly from the lowest and most poverty-stricken castes. Caste is the root of lack of social mobility, and equalising life chances in India - which is ranked a lowly 72 out of 82 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Social Mobility Report. These institutional and historical factors have created a high degree of tolerance for poverty - seen as a fait accompli, or just poor luck, rather than a result of government incompetence.
Image Source: Satyabrata Tripathy/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Systematic indifference and discrimination are inextricably linked to the pandemic - aggravating the lack of legal protection that migrants and refugees have in their host countries. For instance, since late April, Singapore has had the highest number of Covid-19 infections in Southeast Asia, despite a population of only 5.7 million. Its migrant workers mostly come from Bangladesh and India and work in construction, transport, and sanitation. Foreign workers (mostly low wage labourers) makeup over 20% of the population but account for a disturbing 94% of Singapore’s Covid-19 cases, according to the Ministry of Health. This is largely due to their overcrowded dormitories, where up to 20 share a room, and hundreds share one bathroom and kitchen facilities. Only after widespread national and international scrutiny and condemnation, the government announced on June 10th that it would build new dormitories with better living conditions that could house around 600,000 workers by the end of this year.
Image Source: Courtesy of Singapore's Ministry of Manpower/Nikkei Asian Review
Yet, the dorm conditions simply reflect the shocking disparity in living conditions and treatment by the Government to migrant workers, as opposed to citizens; and the wider problem of societal negligence towards migrant workers in Singapore. Singapore’s economic prosperity has relied heavily on cheap imported labour. This can explain why there is the inadequate legal protection of workers from unethical employers, and insufficient workers rights - which allows employers to keep imported labour’s payroll and living costs low. According to TWC2, an NGO that fights for better treatment of migrant workers in Singapore, the most pressing problems for them before and during Covid-19 include salary non-payment or short-payment, unreasonable salary deductions, and limited access to medical care. Regrettably, the Government is largely complicit in this regulatory neglect and abetment. It is ineffectual in enforcing laws against these abuses, and only has laws for migrant workers that are vague and hardly enforced. Alarmingly, there is not even a minimum wage in Singapore. Moreover, foreign workers are forced to pay exorbitant recruitment fees, and it is illegal for them to change jobs – with only narrow exceptions – so employees are de facto bound to their employers, and lack bargaining power and a fair process, to improve their working and living conditions.
Lack of legal protection
While the world’s attention was on well-to-do cruise passengers being turned away by countries due to Covid-19 fears, the pandemic necessarily facilitated nation-states’ ability to ignore international laws and human rights, at the expense of migrants and refugees. For instance, on April 16th, the Malaysian navy obstructed a boat carrying around 200 Rohingya refugees from entering Malaysian waters, due to Covid-19 concerns. Bangladesh announced soon after that it would no longer accept more Rohingya refugees. Malaysian law considers refugees and asylum seekers as ‘illegal immigrants’ and is entitled to limited legal protection. After Malaysia’s lockdown on the 18th of March, there has been a wave of xenophobic posts on social media and petitions calling for Rohingya refugees to be deported – a violation of international law.
Image Source: Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The treatment that Rohingya refugees receive from governments and that many migrant workers receive from local host populations reflects how foreigners and vulnerable communities are often scapegoated in times of crisis. Najib Razak, Malaysia’s disgraced former prime minister, even accused the Rohingya of “taking advantage of Malaysia” and asserted that Malaysia “can no longer continue to be the main destination of this ethnic group”. This raises concerns that governments are using the pandemic as a pretext, to ignore international human rights law, such as the notion of non-refoulement, to enact disproportionate and discriminatory health measures, and to justify ill-treatment of marginalised communities. A closed port policy would result in another migrant crisis, most likely worse than the 2015 Andaman Sea Crisis. In fact, the UNHCR has already announced that we are currently “witnessing the highest levels of human displacement on record”, with over 70 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide.
Refugees and migrant workers cannot be forgotten in this global public health and humanitarian crisis. In doing so, we risk public health, exacerbate socio-economic inequalities, and forsake our obligation to help overlooked communities and to enable them to help themselves. Governments should work with each other, and alongside international organisations and NGOs to address problems that refugees and migrant workers face, and to find viable solutions to them. As Dr Jeremy Lim from HealthServe, an NGO that champions migrants’ rights in Singapore rightly said, “if they [migrant workers] are at higher risk, then all of us become at higher risk also, because in managing outbreaks and epidemics, the chain is only as strong as the weakest link.”