Regional Women Migrants Conference
Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) together with its partner organizations successfully conducted the Regional Women Migrants Conference (RWMC) at Nouvo City Hotel Bangkok on 20-21 September 2022. The RWMC was a continuation and build upon the results and recommendations of series of National Women Migrants Encounter (NWME) held in 10 countries from December 2021 to March 2022, and online Regional Women Migrants Encounter (RWME) held on 1 April 2022, as reflected in the Regional Women Migrants Agenda (RWMA).
The RWMC was held physically and aims to: (a) gather updates in terms of issues and campaigns by participating women migrant organizations after the virtual RWME; (b) contribute to advocacy capacities of women migrants in relation to their ongoing campaigns and mapping their engagements; and (c) finalize the Regional Women Migrants’ Agenda and discuss its ways forward.
The RWMC was attended by 17 representatives from Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and Global. Participants from Taiwan joined the RWMC via online.
Aaron Ceradoy, the General Manager of APMM, said “for so long, we hear about the migrant movement but not women's migrant movement”. In this regard, APMM supports and facilitates hearing from women migrants.
During the Regional Women Migrants Conference, there was a keynote speech from International Women’s Alliance which provided the participants with the situations and struggles of women. There was also a Women Migrants’ Talks Show which aims to understand more about women migrants situations and their campaign and advocacy. A sharing of APMM’s Preliminary Research Report on The enabling environment for organizing migrant workers in five countries in Asia Pacific was also happening. Then, the Regional Women Migrants Agenda (RWMA) was approved. A series of discussions on Global Compact of Migration, on doing effective migrant advocacy and on doing the Migrants’ Spotlight Report (MSR) was also happening.
The final session of the RWMC is feedback and evaluation. The organizing team expresses their gratitude to the participants for their active participation and for a lot of learning during the RWMC. Majority of the participants share that the RWMC is the first meeting that they attend physically after years of covid-19 pandemic and it is refreshing. The participants mention that all of the processes are easy to catch, not boring and encouraging. One of the participants says “the overall conduct, content of the conference was a success and a lot of information and learnings”. A video version of the Regional Women Migrants Agenda was produced during the RWMC.