Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Caritas launches guide for women migrants

Caritas  Internationalis launched a guide to help migrant women and their families. 

The Catholic Church’s official charity launched ‘The Female Face of Migration’ to mark International Women’s Day.

The online report, describes women’s negative experiences when they migrate abroad and gives governments and the Church recommendations on how they can help.

See: http://www.caritas.org/activities/women_migration/FemaleFaceOfMigration.html

It also speaks about human trafficking, which is believed to have increased worldwide. The US State Department says over 12 million people are trafficked around the world and nearly 60% of those are women.

“We urgently need to change the way we think about migration because the current system is failing to protect women who migrate,”said Caritas Internationalis advocacy and policy director Martina Liebsch.

“Many women leave children behind, sometimes to take care of other people’s children abroad,”said Liebsch.

“Their own children grow up without a mother and in the care of other relatives,” she said.

“This new generation of children is deprived of care during a period when they need it the most.  We need policies that keep families together or at least offer social protection to the children left behind.”

Caritas Internationalis’ website has a new game which allows viewers to take decisions pretending to be a migrant women and how it would affect them.

Click here to play ‘Follow a Migrant Woman’. http://www.caritas.org/activities/women_migration/InteractiveFemaleMigration1.html

The website also includes the stories of four migrant women from Nepal, Mexico, Congo and Ukraine and how Caritas helped them get out of working in situations jobs they were forced in to including prostitution.