ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Around 5,000 Nigerian women are stranded in Iraq, according to the head of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission.
“As I speak with you today there are about 5,000 women stranded in Iraq,” said the head of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, as reported by Vanguard news on Wednesday.
Dabiri-Erewa said that the women travel to Iraq to work as caregivers, but end up stranded or in difficult situations.
“I just dealt with a case last week. A husband sent his wife to Iraq to go and be a caregiver. She’s dead,” she said.
She explained that they are working to repatriate the body of the recently deceased woman and investigate the cause of her death, “because she just died mysteriously being a caregiver.”
While warning of the dangers of irregular migration, she also called on Nigerians to seek opportunities locally, rather than risk their lives abroad.
Many Nigerians leave the country in search of better job opportunities.
Information about domestic workers in Iraq is often inaccurate, the deputy head of the Women, Family, and Childhood Committee in the Iraqi Parliament Sarwa Mohammed told Rudaw on Thursday, explaining that some of the foreign workers are transported to the Emirates and other Gulf countries, and then illegally brought into Iraq.
Najm al-Aqabi, spokesperson for the Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, said that there are several agencies responsible for the entry of foreign workers, such as the Housing Department and some other security agencies.
There are nearly one million foreign workers in Iraq, 70 percent of then working without permits, according to the Iraqi Workers Union.
Iraq’s Labor Law stipulates that no foreign worker may work without a permit from the Ministry of Labor, the employer must bear the cost of the travel ticket to Iraq, and if the foreign worker dies, the employer must cover the cost of repatriating their body to their country of origin.
Iraq is both a source and destination country for human trafficking.
“Traffickers subject migrants, both documented and undocumented, from throughout Asia and Africa to forced labor as construction workers, security guards, cleaners, handymen, and domestic workers in Iraq,” stated the United States 2024 Trafficking in Persons report, which noted that trafficking victims in Iraq often face harsh treatment, are underpaid, and made to live in substandard conditions.
