NGO helps raise labour migrants' legal awareness

"People in uniform surround us the moment we leave the plane," begins Zoulfia, a Tajik working as a sales assistant in Moscow. "First they look for documents, then ask confusing follow-up questions. Sometimes the easiest solution is to try to pay them off, but you are confronted by the same situation every day." Zoulfia echoes the troubles of many Tajik migrants abroad. A nation of 6.5 million people, Tajikistan has been losing as many as 1.2 million jobs to labour markets in Russia and other Central Asian countries every year since 1991. The murder of nine-year-old Khursheda Sultanova in early February in St. Petersburg sent shock waves throughout Tajik society and served as a gruesome reminder of the risks facing migrants abroad. "The difficult economic situation" is the most frequently cited cause of migration in Tajikistan, according to a July 2003 study of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The civil war of the 1990s thwarted Tajikistan's recovery from the economic disaster into which the country plunged after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Disillusioned with their economic future at home, many Tajiks leave, expecting that 70 years of shared history would guarantee them a trouble-free future in the neighboring newly independent states. These hopes often fall short of reality. Unaware of their rights and responsibilities, many fail to secure their legal status and engage in legally binding employment contracts. Brushes with law-enforcement bodies leave them exposed to abuses and extreme punishments, such as imprisonment and deportation. Payment for their services is often left to the whim of their employers. Zebo Sharifova of the Dushanbe-based Tajik Women-Lawyers' League is all too aware of these problems. Her knowledge comes not just from interviews with migrants appealing for help from her organization. Zoulfia, Zebo's sister,and their brother are both seasonal workers in Moscow. Understanding that poor knowledge of immigration laws presents the greatest difficulty for them, Zebo and her fellow members of the League embarked on an ambitious programme to raise the legal awareness of Tajik citizens abroad. On 23 February, the League opened three information kiosks in the capital Dushanbe, where the would-be migrants receive legal advice and booklets describing the requirements which they would be expected to fulfil abroad. The kiosks are staffed by professional lawyers provided by the League. Zoulfia welcomes this initiative; "This makes a tremendous difference for us." The programme is supported by the Open Society Institute in Tajikistan. However, effective as it may prove in the short-term, raising migrants' legal awareness alone is unlikely to provide a sustainable solution to their problems. "The Government would be advised take a proactive stance vis-à-vis the phenomenon of labor migration", says Frederic Chenais, IOM's head of the mission in Tajikistan. "Labour market research should be carried out so that the migrants could make informed decisions about their employment plans. This would also help them develop marketable skills." The IOM runs a similar legal awareness programme and has recently opened a resource centre for labour migrants in Dushanbe. The information project is not Zebo's first foray into the complex web of labour migration issues. She was amongst the participants in several recent roundtables involving Moscow city authorities and the Tajik Diaspora. "We seem to have improved our understanding of each other and the situation is changing for the better." Zebo is cautious about her initial results. "But we still have a long way to go," she says.