Hey all--I'm finally settled into my apartment in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and so far I love the city. It's small enough to be manageable, so I'm getting around ok, and the food is great (yesterday I learned the essentials of how to order soup in Thai [step 1: specify the type of noodle you want. Step 2: specify your broth. Step 3: meat]). To get to work, I've been hailing song tao, open truck-taxis with two rows of seats that pick up passengers along a route made up as the driver goes along.
Work so far has been overwhelming, in a good way. I'm working for the Migrant Assistance Program Foundation for Ethnic Health and Labour (MAP), which deals with all things related to Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. The main office is in Chiang Mai, and there are smaller outposts in Mae Sot (a Burmese border town) and Phang Nga, which is on the southern coast and has lots of migrants working in the fishing industry. The MAP staff is mostly Thai or Burmese, with the exception of the Director, a British woman who has lived in Thailand for 30 years, and my supervisor, who's American. Reena, my supervisor, sat with the other intern (a Burmese woman who is studying in Hong Kong) and me this week to describe MAP's work. It was a long meeting, because the organization really seems to do everything: they have Thai lawyers on staff, who take all kinds of cases through the Thai judicial system on behalf of migrant workers; there is a group called POSH (Promoting Occupational Safety and Health) that conducts safety trainings for workers; the Community Health and Empowerment segment deals with migrant workers' access to health care, including HIV testing and access to ARVs; MAP Multimedia (MMM) runs a radio station that deals with issues pertinent to migrant workers in Chiang Mai (soon we'll be broadcasting in Mae Sot too), makes documentaries, and produces other materials that support the rest of MAP's projects; and MAP also runs an emergency safe house for migrant workers in crisis. I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out, but the general idea is that they provide social services, do advocacy on behalf of Burmese workers, and take on related legal cases. It's an amazing mix, and I have no idea how they do it with such a small staff.
I'll be helping the Legal Support write a "shadow report" for CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). Each CEDAW signatory is supposed to submit reports on their progress in terms of conforming to the convention. NGOs write "shadow" or alternative reports supplementing the country submissions, with particular emphasis on the situation on the ground as related to the NGO's particular expertise. MAP's shadow report will deal with CEDAW General Recommendation 26, which focuses on the rights of women migrant workers. To do this, I'll be traveling with MAP staff to Songklaburi, Thailand, where they will conduct a training that will alert migrant women to their rights as workers. At the same time the training will allow us to gather information on abuses that migrant women suffer. Along with information from other trainings, and research on Thai law, we'll compile a snapshot of the situation for Burmese migrant women along the border and will make recommendations to the Thai government and the CEDAW committee on how Thailand can better conform to their international legal obligations under the convention.
The picture uploader isn't working but I'll try to add some soon.
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