ROME (CNS): Increasing numbers of women are migrating alone, a situation that makes them vulnerable to violence and exploitation, but one that often shows their courage and commitment to making a better life for their families, speakers at a conference in Rome said.
About 214 million people lived outside their country of origin, and half of all migrants were women, said Miguel Diaz, United States ambassador to the Holy See, which sponsored a panel discussion about migration and women on May 24.
The ambassador said the global economic crisis had increased the danger that migrant women and children would fall prey to traffickers as they fled violence and poverty, seeking a better life for themselves and their families.
President of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travellers Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio said in the experience of the Catholic Church, its ministers and aid agencies, women who had been forced to migrate, “despite everything that has happened to them in their lives, respond to their situation with remarkable courage, resourcefulness and creativity”.
“They believe wholeheartedly that the future offers change and possibilities,” he said.
At the same time, the cardinal said, women migrants needed special protection.
They may be the targets of ethnically motivated rape during times of civil strife; their safety often was not ensured even in refugee camps; and many became the head of their household in a land where they did not speak the language or understand the culture.
Caritas Internationalis policy director Martina Liebsch told conference participants that strong myths were believed by both migrants and people in the countries they hoped to enter.
Migrants, she said, “often believe in the myth of a better life somewhere else, in developed countries, whereas in fact they often end up undocumented, doing precarious work, with little or no access to rights”.
The people who make the most money out of migration – traffickers and smugglers – “exploit this myth and the dreams.”
Ms Liebsch said a police officer told a recent Vatican conference “it is easier nowadays to traffic a person than to traffic drugs or weapons”.
People in the world’s richer countries “have their own myth – that they are being invaded by migrants”, she said.
But research has demonstrated there is more migration in the developing world because most migrants want to stay as close as possible to their homelands.
In addition, she said, the rich countries relied heavily on migrants for semi-skilled and unskilled labour in construction and in domestic work, including caring for the elderly and for children.
Ms Liebsch said national laws, international policies and non-governmental agency efforts to assist migrants must become more sensitive to the fact that women and men migrants often faced very different threats and challenges.
In particular, the fact that so many women migrants ended up doing domestic work meant they were employed in the least regulated sector of most countries’ economies and faced the most potential exploitation.
