Glorene A. Das

Glorene A. Das is the executive director of Tenaganita Womens’ Force, a human rights and non-profit organisation dedicated to helping migrants, refugees, women, and children; empowering them; and protecting them from exploitation, discrimination, slavery, and human trafficking. The organisation seeks to promote and protect the rights of marginalised and vulnerable individuals who are rarely heard in this globalised world. She is also the Director of Caram Asia, two-term Treasurer of International Migrants Alliance, Board Member of PAN Asia Pacific, and Treasurer of Asia Peasants Coalition and Co-coordinator of the Gender and Diversities Working Group of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) of the UN Special Committee on Food Security (CFS). Glorene Das has a background in Liberal Studies, Human Rights and Social Science.

APWLD interviewed Glorene in January and below is her story.

Becoming a feminist and human rights defender

Before joining Tenaganita, I worked as a receptionist cum administrative assistant right after high school at a local college. While working in the college, I took on the offer to obtain a certificate, which then led to building my skills in the secretarial and administrative fields. I climbed the ladder for the next nine years to be the head of the administration department and a personal secretary to the President of the college. Quite frankly, I thought I would continue climbing the ladder, but I began to feel restless, as I looked for a change in the direction of my career and my life. I felt that I did not belong in the corporate world, even if it was within the education business.

In December 1999, through a recommendation from my brother, I walked into Tenaganita to meet the late Ms. Aegile Fernandez and the late Dr. Irene Fernandez, co-founder of Tenaganita. That day and the days after changed my life.

When I first walked into Tenaganita’s office in 1999, at the age of 27, I knew nothing about human rights. During my first month, I had to spend time at the library to learn what human rights meant. I had never related to the migrant and refugee populations before, and what I did not know at the time was that my understanding would change drastically—their fight would soon become mine.  

Working in Tenaganita under the guidance of my mentors, Dr. Irene Fernandez and Angel Fernandez, really increased my knowledge and built my perspective and education. I also became involved in the fight for women migrants and refugees.

Dr. Irene Fernandez passed away in 2014, and I had promised her that I would continue working with Tenaganita, particularly with communities of migrant workers, refugees, and even trafficked women and children.

Little has changed in terms of the general situation of migrants and refugees in Malaysia. Over the years of working in this field, it has saddened me to see that arresting, detaining, and deporting migrant workers or refugees are accepted as norms. At the time I started working, most media outlets were not friendly to migrants and refugees and would not feature our articles.

Making changes is not easy. We took advantage of every opportunity we were given to speak about migrant workers at seminars, conferences, and many different platforms. We told them about the reality on the ground, that the people who built our big buildings were not protected and were not even paid. The media was ineffective, so we turned this information into publication. In 2008, a book we published even reached the US Congress, named The Revolving Door and focused on the trafficking of refugees in Malaysia.

Social media—such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—served us well in some ways. Over the years, we have exposed many cases of abuse of domestic workers, from Nirmala Bonat and Adelina Lisao to 10 different cases related to Cambodian domestic workers. We found many deaths no one talked about them. We started naming and shaming, as well as exposing the exploitation. While this did not go over well with the companies, with some even suing us for defamation, it was effective in creating awareness.

We have been able to engage the public about why it is important to have policies and legal mechanisms for protecting women who work here as migrant workers. Furthermore, we have been able to push for certain amendments to legislation, with intensive work to enact the entire Trafficking in Persons Act, which became law in 2008. Together with other women and local NGOs, we have been pushing for the Sexual Harassment Bill. We have also developed a Domestic Workers Bill, which will be presented to the different ministries and parliaments to ensure better protection for domestic workers in Malaysia.

This country, which has four to six million migrant workers, should have a comprehensive policy to regulate labour migration and protect migrant workers. Tenaganita has advocated for this particular policy, but it is still not in place.

Even so, we have made some progress. We were able to train some authorities on how to be gender sensitive and to incorporate a human rights framework into their initiatives, as well as their actions. We also trained lawyers regarding migrants’ rights and assisted them in taking on some cases that Tenaganita handles so they can represent migrants and other women who have been subjected to human rights violations.

Growing together with APWLD

APWLD is a resource centre, a centre for developing feminist theories and a centre for building capacity. It created concepts and tools and developed frameworks and methodologies like Development Justice.

APWLD has been building feminist theory, and with limited understanding of the whole feminist theory and movement, they were able to give me my first exposure to what it means to be a feminist. I was introduced to APWLD through a workshop on the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Optional Protocol in 2008, followed by a training on Southeast Asia sub-regional Feminist Legal Theory and Practice (FLTP) in 2009. With a feminist perspective, they expanded my capacity to think through theory and to use it in my own self-development and the work we do at Tenaganita.

With an emphasis on building alliances, APWLD gave me the insight that we can’t do this alone and the knowledge that women get together because of their struggles. I learned about intersectionality from APWLD. I believe it is important for me to connect, not just with people, but also with issues. We need to connect national issues to regional issues and eventually to global issues.

Previously, migration and labour were a single programme, but APWLD has now separated the two, recognising the amount of work that needs to be done for either concern. As a member of the Migration Programme Organising Committee (POC), I try to participate in programme activities as much as I can, and balance that with my own commitments. I wish we had more hands and more brains so that I could work more on this issue. It is important to be part of APWLD and its migration programme. We have to be involved and devote ourselves to the work of APWLD so we can develop our own knowledge, understanding, and perspective in line with feminist theory.

Ways moving forward

Things are changing because of the pandemic. Because of lockdowns, Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) cannot be conducted the same way. The same holds true for migration issues. Many women have been affected by lockdowns. Because they are confined, they cannot find a new job even if some of them, like domestic workers, are abused. Some of them are returning home while some are being laid off. 

We should discuss women in prison, as well as domestic workers whose employers are perpetrators of abuse who get away with impunity. This is not only about building awareness but about how different partners in different countries can work together to conduct different campaigns and share information.

We need to think of temporary plans and solutions. I suggest initiating more projects to adapt to the pandemic and giving more funding to grassroots organisations. This allows us to help different communities do more activities at the grassroots level. 

Finally, we should strengthen what is being implemented or what has been planned for 2021. The success of APWLD activities will benefit all members and partners.