2006 May
Editorial
Quite a number of membership renewal reminders are going out with the current newsletter. If you're receiving one, I hope that you'll fill it in and return it.
Membership gives you access to the information that is distributed within TWC2, which includes advance notice of events, news of current activities and comments on questions connected to the position of foreign workers in Singapore. It also entitles you to participate in TWC2's decision making.
Membership is also about what you give. At the minimum, your subscription helps our society to pay its way. Through reading information from TWC2 and making use of it, members help in the process of gradually reshaping public opinion on the issues that concern us. Some members see appeals for practical assistance and put time and energy into specific projects, such as a forum or a piece of research, or just doing the kind of work that helps us keep our routine activities going. It all helps.
We are receiving a growing number of requests for help from domestic workers or from their friends and from individual Singaporeans concerned at things they have heard or seen in their area. We are responding to increasing numbers of information requests. We see signs of views that we have advanced being embraced by more people and evidence that the kind of changes that we have advocated are gaining wider acceptance among the public - such as that of a regular day off for all domestic workers.
We need to win more members; we need you to maintain your membership.
John Gee
Vice President
Quite a number of membership renewal reminders are going out with the current newsletter. If you're receiving one, I hope that you'll fill it in and return it.
Membership gives you access to the information that is distributed within TWC2, which includes advance notice of events, news of current activities and comments on questions connected to the position of foreign workers in Singapore. It also entitles you to participate in TWC2's decision making.
Membership is also about what you give. At the minimum, your subscription helps our society to pay its way. Through reading information from TWC2 and making use of it, members help in the process of gradually reshaping public opinion on the issues that concern us. Some members see appeals for practical assistance and put time and energy into specific projects, such as a forum or a piece of research, or just doing the kind of work that helps us keep our routine activities going. It all helps.
We are receiving a growing number of requests for help from domestic workers or from their friends and from individual Singaporeans concerned at things they have heard or seen in their area. We are responding to increasing numbers of information requests. We see signs of views that we have advanced being embraced by more people and evidence that the kind of changes that we have advocated are gaining wider acceptance among the public - such as that of a regular day off for all domestic workers.
We need to win more members; we need you to maintain your membership.
John Gee
Vice President
New Information Source on Foreign Domestic Workers and Human Rights
The Singapore Institute for International Affairs launched a new website at the beginning of May.
The site's address is:
http://www.siiaonline.org/human_rights_public_education
This section devoted to foreign domestic workers.
This is a useful site. Its basic approach to the status of foreign domestic workers in Singapore differs from ours, and it is appropriate that it begins by making reference to the recent Human Rights Watch report on this issue. Human rights advocacy groups generally rest their arguments on a body of international laws and conventions that attempt to define certain standards for how human beings should be treated and what they ought to have as a matter of right. Many countries have not signed up to all the relevant laws and conventions, but there are some that are accepted or held to apply across the world. Organisations that base themselves on a human rights approach in seeking better standards within a country usually point to commitments the country has made, or which they argue apply to it, and go on to discuss how the country can bring its practices into line with them. This is what this site does.
TWC2 is an advocacy group, but our approach to the question of the rights of foreign domestic workers is rather more pragmatic than that of a human rights body. We generally try to win support from people in Singapore by putting forward arguments that seem to make sense and appeal to the public's ideas of justice and fairness. We also recognise that at least some of the things we'd like to see change are not easily encompassed by existing human rights conventions - particularly 'silent indignities', when a worker is treated in an insensitive or insulting way.
The two approaches complement each other, but it is important to recognise that they are different.
The website article summarises the position of foreign domestic workers in Singapore. Most of the information in this section will be known to TWC2 members and we might have wished that some points were made more decisively- for example, in noting eight accidental deaths in falls from tall buildings in 2005 without mentioning earlier figures and simply indicating that not all falls were accidental (some having been suicide attempts), the site does not fully convey how serious this problem is. However, it does collect together most of the main issues that are capable of being tackled, in large measure, through legal action.
After this, the site sets out what legal measures concerning the protection of the rights of foreign domestic workers are now in force in Singapore. This section goes on to look at regional standards and then at international law.
A third section headed 'Policy Questions' asks: 'What are just and favorable work conditions?', 'How should Singapore ensure just and favorable work conditions?' and 'Why does employer abuse occur? What can and should be done to end abuse?'
The article closes with a list of sources, which includes a newspaper interview given by TWC2's president, Braema Mathi, and our recently published book, 'Dignity Overdue'.
It's certainly a site worth looking at and considering. It does raise points that we might wish to underline in our own advocacy work.
The Singapore Institute for International Affairs launched a new website at the beginning of May.
The site's address is:
http://www.siiaonline.org/human_rights_public_education
This section devoted to foreign domestic workers.
This is a useful site. Its basic approach to the status of foreign domestic workers in Singapore differs from ours, and it is appropriate that it begins by making reference to the recent Human Rights Watch report on this issue. Human rights advocacy groups generally rest their arguments on a body of international laws and conventions that attempt to define certain standards for how human beings should be treated and what they ought to have as a matter of right. Many countries have not signed up to all the relevant laws and conventions, but there are some that are accepted or held to apply across the world. Organisations that base themselves on a human rights approach in seeking better standards within a country usually point to commitments the country has made, or which they argue apply to it, and go on to discuss how the country can bring its practices into line with them. This is what this site does.
TWC2 is an advocacy group, but our approach to the question of the rights of foreign domestic workers is rather more pragmatic than that of a human rights body. We generally try to win support from people in Singapore by putting forward arguments that seem to make sense and appeal to the public's ideas of justice and fairness. We also recognise that at least some of the things we'd like to see change are not easily encompassed by existing human rights conventions - particularly 'silent indignities', when a worker is treated in an insensitive or insulting way.
The two approaches complement each other, but it is important to recognise that they are different.
The website article summarises the position of foreign domestic workers in Singapore. Most of the information in this section will be known to TWC2 members and we might have wished that some points were made more decisively- for example, in noting eight accidental deaths in falls from tall buildings in 2005 without mentioning earlier figures and simply indicating that not all falls were accidental (some having been suicide attempts), the site does not fully convey how serious this problem is. However, it does collect together most of the main issues that are capable of being tackled, in large measure, through legal action.
After this, the site sets out what legal measures concerning the protection of the rights of foreign domestic workers are now in force in Singapore. This section goes on to look at regional standards and then at international law.
A third section headed 'Policy Questions' asks: 'What are just and favorable work conditions?', 'How should Singapore ensure just and favorable work conditions?' and 'Why does employer abuse occur? What can and should be done to end abuse?'
The article closes with a list of sources, which includes a newspaper interview given by TWC2's president, Braema Mathi, and our recently published book, 'Dignity Overdue'.
It's certainly a site worth looking at and considering. It does raise points that we might wish to underline in our own advocacy work.