Antarctic melt crisis Black market labour blues

ANTARCTIC melting could cause a “dramatic” rise in sea levels if countries fail to keep global warming below 2°C, posing a serious threat to lowlying and coastal regions, researchers said yesterday.

If the upper temperature goal set in the Paris Agreement is exceeded, the melting Antarctic ice sheet could cause annual average sea-level rise of 0.18cm globally in 2060 and beyond, said the study published in the journal Nature.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, more than 190 countries agreed to hold global average temperature rise to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial times and strive for a limit of 1.5°C.

Warming of 3°C – a scenario that is more consistent with current policies – would push sea levels up by a “catastrophic” 0.5cm a year globally after 2060, the study added.

Low-lying nations like Bangladesh, which already suffers from extreme storms and floods, are most vulnerable to the impacts of rising temperatures and sea levels, said Atiq Rahman, head of the non-profit Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies.

THE advent of Instagram in recent years has helped create an international black market for migrant workers, in particular women recruited in Africa and Asia who are sold into servitude as maids in Persian Gulf countries.

Unlicensed agents have exploited the social media platform to place these women into jobs that often lack documentation or assurances of proper pay and working conditions. Several women who were marketed via Instagram described being treated essentially as captives and forced to work gruelling hours for far less money than they had been promised.

“They advertise us on social media, then the employer picks. Then we are delivered to their house. We are not told anything about the employers. You’re just told to take your stuff and a driver takes you there,” said Vivian, 24, from Kenya.

When she landed in Dubai last year on a flight from Nairobi, Vivian said she had expected to begin work immediately as a maid, but instead her recruitment agent drove her to a house on the outskirts of the city and locked her in a cramped room with 15 other women. She was held there for several weeks, sleeping on the floor, until the agent found her an employer by advertising on Instagram, she said.

Her photo had been uploaded on to her agent’s account, along with personal details such as her weight, nationality and date of birth.

A review of Instagram activity identified more than 200 accounts that appeared to play a role in marketing women as maids in countries including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Such black market networks have sprung up alongside legal recruitment networks that over the years placed millions of women into jobs as domestic servants in the Persian Gulf region.

Although women who are recruited and placed through a licensed agency can also face a difficult work environment, they are afforded better workplace protections and, because they are documented, have more recourse if they’re abused and can seek help from their embassies, according to labour experts.

An Instagram spokesperson asked for the list of accounts so company officials could investigate. Instagram has since deleted these accounts.

“Human exploitation is horrific, and we don’t allow it on Instagram. We’ve disabled all the accounts reported to us,” said Stephanie Otway, a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram.

Asked why Instagram had not identified these accounts on its own, Otway said it was taking this kind of activity “extremely seriously” and had been consulting with expert organisations to target various forms of human exploitation and trafficking that use the social media platform.

Ryszard Cholewinski, the senior migration specialist at the UN International Labour Organization, said the women were being subjected to “forced labour. If they disappear into the informal labour market and end up in households, they effectively become invisible.”

Vivian said she had been made to work from 5am until midnight, with no days off. She was paid $272 (R3 900) a month, about $140 less than she said the recruiters promised her. She said she became ill and was still not allowed to rest. After three weeks, she refused to go on working, and her employers requested a refund from her UAE agent for the $2 180 they had paid for her, Vivian recalled. The agent refused until they threatened to call the police.

“My agent was angry and told me he would take me to a place where I would regret forever,” she said.

She ran away and was still living in the UAE as an undocumented immigrant.

Vivian said she originally had been recruited in Kenya by a woman named Susan Wanjiku, director of the Alphasher Agency in Nairobi. Wanjiku said she recruited women as maids for both licensed and unlicensed agents in Persian Gulf countries, using Instagram to connect with them. She denied the women she recruits are abused or exploited.

The UAE agents are responsible for paying for the flight and visa fees, Wanjiku said. To ensure that these agents do not cheat her out of payment, Wanjiku never puts large groups of women on the same flight.