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What CP-TING does in sending provinces:
- Reducing the school drop-out rate of girls under 16 years old, to improve their future employment opportunities;
- Working with girls and young women at high risk of being victimized and the communities in which they live, warning them of the dangers of unprepared and ill-informed migration, and encouraging their direct participation in creating local solutions;
- Paying special attention to the needs of unskilled girls and young women - in particular those who have dropped out of school prematurely, as they are more vulnerable to being lured into unacceptable work;
- Raising awareness of the risks of trafficking and HIV-AIDS, protection measures and legal literacy in pre-departure life-skills training to prospective migrant girls (aged 16 and over) and young women.
What CP-TING does in receiving provinces:
- Protecting the labour rights of all migrant workers - including the adoption of minimum standards for employment contracts, training and information, and the provision of support services;
- Campaigning for proper treatment of migrant workers and recognition of the benefits they bring to urban areas;
- Improving access to social services in urban areas for migrant girls and young women in need;
- Working with workers' and employers' organizations to offer decent jobs to migrant girls/women (aged 16-24) and monitoring of working conditions.
What CP-TING does in all provinces and nationally:
- Working towards conceptual clarity on trafficking in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Transnational Crime Convention's Optional Protocol on trafficking, and ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour;
- Disaggregating, by age and sex, and fully analyzing existing data to support focused policy initiatives;
- Documenting lessons learned from pilot projects to improve policy frameworks at national, provincial and local levels;
- Promoting managed migration for employment purposes, including bilateral cooperation agreements between sending and receiving provinces;
- Free information and job placement services targeting prospective migrant workers above 15 years of age (see www.womenldl.com.cn);
- Supervision of recruitment and contracting agencies for migrant workers.
Following is an outline of work to date, and an overview of ongoing projects:
- In 2005, Anhui Province integrated information on trafficking into the basic education curriculum.
- By June of 2007, financial contributions of about RMB 13,323,931 had been made by local governments to support projects related trafficking prevention work.
- In 2006, interventions to help a specific number of girls regularly and over a longer period of time started in all the project provinces. This involves awareness raising and education support for girls between 10 and 15, and safe migration and employment support to girls and young women aged 16 to 24. The interventions are carried out by a range of the ILO's partners including Women's Federations, Education Bureaus, Labour Bureaus, and research institutes.
- At International Migrants Day, Women's Day and Children's Day a range of mobilization and awareness raising events were held in the provinces.
- At the time of the 2006 Spring Festival, all our project provinces conducted a massive campaign to reach out to thousands of migrant girls. Please see the Summary report.
Other interventions to date include:
- In the '2007 Spring Rain Campaign' which was held during the Spring Festival period of February to March, all five pilot-provinces worked together with railways staff to promote safe travel and anti-trafficking messages to girls as they traveled into cities. Over 800,000 pieces of awareness-raising material were distributed by volunteers and railways staff.
- 3,000 government officials ran a race against trafficking and 1,513 racers submitted cards with suggestions to prevent trafficking (Hunan);
- 3,000 girls participated in a speech writing contest on trafficking (Hunan);
- A law study event on trafficking in 20 migrant cities in Guangdong reached out to 1 million migrant households;
- Fundraising events were held among the private sector. In Jiangsu one such event raised RMB 0.12 million for 200 migrant girls to return to school;
- Interviews with girl victims of trafficking in Anhui were broadcast to an audience of 5 million;
- Migrant girls have formed groups prior to departure and stay in contact through SMS/email;
- Girls in school are testing ways to reach out to out-of-school girls.
Ongoing projects:
Educating girls at risk:
As of early to-mid 2007, a manual on life skills for girls and boys in lower secondary schools is being piloted in the three sending provinces of Anhui, Henan and Hunan. The manual is part of a wider educational campaign aiming to teach girls and boys about issues such as the changes of adolescence, drugs and alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and tips on migrating safely and living in the city.
The results of this pilot testing will be used as the basis for a revised version which will be distributed more widely. The manual will also be used as the basis for a handbook for older girls who have already migrated to the receiving provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu, and give them information that will be useful for them, and which they can also use to help their friends and family back home understand more about safe migration and decent work.
A National Plan of Action:
Chinese authorities are in the process of preparing a National Plan of Action. The CP-TING project, its partners and other international organizations have provided input into this work. The current draft includes sections on prevention, education and safe migration and was submitted to the State Council for approval.
Research:
Five large-scale baseline surveys, covering more than 8,700 households, on trafficking in girls and young women are close to completion. In all project provinces, qualitative research on opinions of migrant girls explores the migration dynamics from the perspectives of girls and young women. Reports on these studies are forthcoming. |
