Unrest in the Middle East and North Africa: Focus on reverse exodus
by Martha A. Teodoro
Political unrest broke out in one of the richest regions in the world as 2010 wound down. People from at least 15 countries in the Middle East and North Africa began taking to the streets in December to protest living conditions and their respective governments’ inability to improve the quality of their lives.
In the Philippines, however, media coverage of the protests focused primarily on the situation of overseas Filipinos workers (OFWs). But even the reportage on the OFWs was limited to stories on the impact of the unrest on their lives, with the media rarely providing the public analyses on how the protests could affect Philippine government policies.
PJR Reports looked at the broadsheets Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Philippine Star and Manila Bulletin as well as the primetime news programs 24 Oras, Aksyon, and TV Patrol, the monitor also covered online news sites.
How it began
On Dec. 17, 2010, a Tunisian college graduate, Mohammed Bouazizi, set himself on fire after police confiscated his vegetable cart. Selling fruits and vegetables, which required a license in Tunisia, was his only source of income. He died on Jan. 4, 2011.
Bouazizi’s act of desperation ignited the protest against President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in office for 24 years. The Tunisian protest, later tagged as the Jasmine Revolution, started on Dec. 19, 2010 and succeeded in forcing Ben Ali to leave office on Jan. 14, 2011.
Other demonstrations exploded throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa in the wake of the Tunisian example. Protests have rocked Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria since December 2010. Only the protests in Tunisia and Egypt have so far been successful in ousting unpopular presidents. Leaders from Jordan, Morocco and Oman have held on by promising reforms and replacing some members of their cabinets, while the current leaders of Iraq and Yemen have pledged not to run again for office.
Philippine media did report on the protests. But the choice of which countries to report on seemed to have been based on whether there was violence, and how much. In most cases, the reports were from the foreign news agencies, with local reporters weighing in only when the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) had something to say.
Media and the OFW exodus
As a result of this focus, there was little mention of the reasons for the protests. Although most of the reports were from the foreign news services, the decision to print and air them were nevertheless made by local editors, who apparently did not think the issues driving the protests to be relevant to Filipinos.
And yet the protests were mostly on the lack of job opportunities, an issue with which not only OFWs are familiar. Given that in 2009 alone, a total of 135,648 Filipinos workers were deployed to the countries being rocked by protests, and that the leaders of countries such as Oman and Saudi Arabia have so far promised more jobs, the media failed to provide either information or analysis on whether these reforms would affect Filipino job contracts and job security in the countries involved.
Statistics on the OFWs were presented by online news media. Interaksyon.com and GMA News Online (http://www.gmanews.tv/story/214410/map-infographic-ofws-in-countries-in-turmoil) provided interactive maps of the Middle East and North Africa with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) count of OFW deployment per country. abs-cbnnews.com (http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/sites/default/files/others/interactive/map.html) gave the public a per country view on the estimated number of Filipinos per country, their remittances, the number of oil barrels the Philippines imports from them, and their oil production in barrels per day.
As protests in Egypt and later, Libya, escalated, questions on Filipino casualties and preparedness should evacuation be necessary deluged the government. DFA said there were no Filipino casualties, and in early February said that mandatory evacuation was unnecessary, and that the Department was on top of the situation.
DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Worker Affairs Esteban Conejos in a report aired Jan. 31, 2011 on 24 Oras said that should there be a Filipino casualty, the alert level would automatically climb to three, which would mean mandatory OFW relocation. The Bulletin on March 11, 2011 also quoted DFA Undersecretary for Administration Rafael Seguis as explaining what should be done when an alert level is raised. Exactly what the alert levels are, how many levels there are in it, and what each level entails was information the media did not provide.
The media did focu their attention on government’s alleged lack of concrete evacuation and repatriation plans as protests in Libya turned violent. But were mostly satisfied to report the return of Filipinos from Libya.
Migrante International Middle East coordinator John Leonard Monterona pointed out that the lack of repatriation plans by the government is actually a consequence of the existing laws on migrant workers. “Naka-depende ang evacuation plans sa recruitment agencies at employers (evacuation plans depend on the recruitment agencies and employers),” he said.
Sec. 15 of the Republic Act No. 8042, also known as the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act of 1995 states that “The repatriation of the worker and the transport of his personal belongings shall be the primary responsibility of the agency which recruited or deployed the worker overseas. All costs attendant to repatriation shall be borne by or charged to the agency concerned and/or its principal.”
This same provision is reiterated in POEA’s rules on licensing recruitment agencies, which requires the recruitment agency to submit an undertaking assuming liability and to “repatriate the deployed workers and his personal belongings when the need arises.”
Instead of reporting how Philippine laws themselves impact on the rescue of OFWs in conflict areas, the media limited themselves to reporting the government’s attempts to convince the public that that it can take care of the millions of migrant workers outside the country.
In the first place, Sec. 4 of the Migrant Workers Act states that the Philippines shall deploy workers only in countries “signatory to multi lateral conventions, declarations or solutions relating to the protection of migrant workers”.
And yet, Saudi Arabia, which hosts about one million Filipino workers, is not even a signatory to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families adopted in 1990. The media could have noted this fact and raised such relevant questions as how OFWs can be protected in countries like Saudi Arabia.
To prove that Filipinos overseas are safe, DFA highlighted the growing number of OFWs being repatriated back to the Philippines. The media responded by printing stories on the DFA’s “welcoming” the returning workers. Since Feb. 27, media coverage has shifted to reporting on migrant repatriation and human interest stories focused on the OFWs’ emotional reunions with their families inder mining of reporting on the difficulties of repatriating thousands of workers, and the problems attendant to their return to the country.
As the repatriations went on, the media only occasionally reported on what would happen to the OFWs once they arrive in Manila. DOLE Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz and OWWA administrator Carmelita Dimzon, who both said that the government had a “repatriation package” for OFWs, were interviewed. The package includes immediate assistance of P10,000, free psychosocial counseling, skills training, and priority for business loans. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines) has also accommodated OFWs from Libya by allowing them to exchange dinars directly to pesos. Government agencies have also promised referrals and job placements abroad.
But the focus on the “package” missed the point. The Middle East and North African unrest has brought the OFW issue home to roost: how the failure to provide employment at home has thrown millions of Filipinos in harm’s way abroad. Instead of focusing attention on the fact that OFW deployment is at best a temporary solution to unemployment, the media chose to limit themselves to chronicling the reverse exodus of OFWs instead.
With research from Kristal Kay S. Jimena and Norman Lee Benjamin D. Riego
[…] Unrest in the Middle EastFocus on reverse exodus | Center for … […]
[…] Unrest in the Middle East and North Africa Focus on Reverse Exodus by Martha A. Teodoro with research from Kristal Kay S. Jimena and Norman Lee Benjamin D. Riego […]