“I get scared whenever my father is out of the house. He doesn’t
realise it, by I’m overcome with fear,” says 14-year-old Maryam. Her
parents were unable to register her, because they did not have a
validated marriage certificate. There were many reasons for this.
But the key one was that she did not have her mother’s passport or
anything to prove her identity. After her mother died, she lived in
constant state of fear and anxiety because of her and her father’s
precarious legal status in Jordan, and the associated dangers.
Such fears are well founded, given that her father faces a real risk
of being detained and deported, because he has no valid work permit
and his residency has expired. The same fears prevent Mado and
others from trying to formalise their situation and be legally
compliant.
According to a report from Amnesty International entitled
“Imprisoned Women, Stolen Children,” unmarried women in Jordan face
the problem of having their newborns forcibly taken away from them,
since the law regards them as “illegitimate”. The Amnesty report
details the case of a Bangladeshi domestic worker who was held in
administrative detention for over four months for committing the
“crime of adultery.” During her detention she gave birth, and her
baby was taken away from her. She was not even told where the child
was, despite her asking repeatedly and pleading to see him.
In another case, a female worker from Indonesia who had been raped
twice was imprisoned for three and a half years, without any clear
legal grounds, during which time her children were sent to foster
families.
According to lawyer Asma Amireh, the woman was able to see her
children only once during her detention. Then, after she was
released, she was told that they had been placed in foster care. She
was forced to accept this as a fait accompli and stop asking to have
them back, especially since they had by then adapted to their new
lives. Any legal redress would, in any case, have been too
difficult, too long drawn out, and too costly for her.
The story of 16-year-old Omar is another example of female workers
being deported without their children. Omar’s mother is a Sri Lankan
domestic worker and his father an Indian worker. He was living with
his parents up to the time his mother was arrested under an
administrative ruling for breaching the Law on Residence and
Foreigners' Affairs. She was deported without her son, because
unpaid fines for overstaying his residency permit had accumulated
since he was born and he had no identity papers at the time. His
father subsequently died and Omar was homeless for two years, during
which time he suffered various forms of “sexual and physical”
exploitation.
The boy was eventually deported and reunited with his mother, thanks
to the cooperation of several parties - including Tamkeen, the Sri
Lankan embassy, and the ATUC - and the general amnesty for
residency fines that came into effect in 2018.
Ali Al-Khasbeh, head of the Welfare and Alternative Families
Department within the Jordanian Ministry of Social Development,
explains that, if a mother is held in administrative detention for
violating labour or residency laws, her unregistered child (if
newborn or under two years old) will be sent to the Al-Hussein
Social Foundation. If the child is over two, he is sent to another
type of care home. This could be either a voluntary (private) or
governmental, where he is given a national number and granted
Jordanian citizenship.
During this same time, says Al-Khasbeh, an assessment of the child’s
case is made, under the auspices of the Juvenile and Family
Protection Department, to see if the child could be sent to
“alternative care”. This involves assessing a number of factors,
including asking the mother about the child and the how serious and
desirous she is to prove parentage, and how feasible this is.
Mothers who are migrant workers must also give their consent before
their children can be handed over to these alternative families.
This consent must be obtained verbally or in writing, according to
Al-Khasbeh.
At the same time, that there is a proportion of working women who
opt to leave their children in Jordan of their own free will. Social
factors usually lurk behind this decision, such as having a child
outside marriage, says Al-Khasbeh.
If the mother refuses to give up her child to an alternative family
- whether the child’s parentage is "proven or unknown" - the child
will remain in the social institution or care home until the
mother’s prison sentence ends, or until the procedures for
establishing the child's parentage are completed.
Ali Al-Khasbeh – the official in the Welfare and Alternative
Families Department of the Ministry of Social Development – also
points out that the child can be returned to the birth family if
they can prove they are the parents. This is done through a court
order, following which the child’s national number and Jordanian
citizenship are withdrawn by Civil Status Department, after they
have been notified by the Ministry of Social Development.
We contacted the Juvenile and Family Protection Department of the
Public Security Directorate, to ask them why children of female
workers were being taken away. But the department did not provide an
answer or any information.
Embassies – diplomatic efforts and negligence
Mohammad Maaytah, assistant executive secretary of the ATUC, who is
in charge of the Migrant Workers Support and Empowerment Centre,
thinks that embassies are clearly negligent in the way they deal
with migrant workers who are their nationals, in particular with
regard to documentation procedures and proving parentage.
The basic principle is that the embassies should establish parentage
and issue birth certificates. These are then authenticated by the
Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says Maaytah, without the
need to go through a long and expensive process to obtain legal
protection.
"When a child obtains identity documents from their embassy, they
become a legal person with standing in the world, regardless of
their mother and father’s legal status in the kingdom."
For foreign workers to obtain birth certificates from their
embassies in Jordan, they must first register the birth and obtain a
birth certificate authenticated by the Jordanian authorities, which
brings us back to square one: the birth certificate!
Both Tamkeen and the Justice Centre for Legal Aid say that
cooperation from embassies in issuing documents and facilitating
transactions has helped to resolve problems related to documenting
and repatriating children. Yet there have been instances where
embassies closed their doors to children, and cases of children
coming from countries that did not have any diplomatic
representation in Jordan.
Maaytah emphasises that, when it comes to the problem of
unregistered marriages and children, it is important for there to be
clear legal conditions in bilateral agreements governing migrant
labour signed between the Jordanian government and that of other
countries.
Maaytah also pointed to the problem migrant workers face if their
countries follow Islamic law. This is because the child is
considered “illegitimate”, if the father does not acknowledge him or
is absent, even if the child is the product of a relationship based
on offer and acceptance and on the testimony of witnesses. This is
in contrast to some countries, which grant the mother the right to
assign parenthood to the child, if the father is absent or fails to
acknowledge the child.
Vicious Circle
The Tamkeen centre contacted the Ministry of Interior several times
to try and resolve the problem of registering children of female
migrant workers in Jordan, offering a range of solutions. But the
centre says it received no response to the official letters it sent.
Lawyer Asma Amireh says she believes the government is
insufficiently aware of the extent of this problem and how serious
its consequences are, especially given the high percentage of
informal workers. “Think about these children in ten years’ time…
we’re going to see a whole generation that has not been educated or
had proper health care. Some of them may end up on the streets,
homeless, and at risk of being bought and sold or exploited …them or
their families.”
Case pending “indefinitely”
In August 2023, the Philippine Embassy in Jordan was granted a
special concession - following nearly a decade of negotiations with
the Jordanian Foreign Ministry - to repatriate, with their mothers,
children born out of wedlock in Jordan and to waive fines for
overstaying. The embassy facilitated the issuing of both Philippine
civil registration and travel documents. The Migrant Workers Office
in Jordan covered the cost of air and bus travel prior to departure.
The Philippine embassy subsequently announced that 40 children and
their mothers had returned to the Philippines in batches, who had
previously been prevented from returning because they did not have
Jordanian birth certificates - a condition for travel outside
Jordan.
Roberto and his 49-year-old mother Melinda (not her real name) were
not among these returnees. “I have no choice but to work,” says
Melinda. “I work to provide for my family in the Philippines and my
son here, especially as his father isn’t around and has abandoned
his responsibilities towards the child. It would be hard to find
another job if I went back home, as I’m elderly. And also there’s
the problem of paying off the huge fines that have mounted up over
the years.”
Even though she realises that she has broken the labour and
residence laws, Melinda believes that her child should not be
punished for what she has done by being deprived of his basic rights
and being fined.
We contacted the Embassy of the Republic of Bangladesh in Jordan to
ask them about documenting the children of migrant workers, both
male and female. Their response was that they could not grant
citizenship to children in this category if there was no official
marriage document/birth certificate. They said: “Marriage is a legal
contract. If it isn’t registered, of if there are loopholes in it,
for any reason, it can’t be considered a marriage. There must be
some form of documentation.”
The embassy has one or two cases a year of parents seeking to
document their children. They contact the embassy from the detention
centre and these unresolved cases are referred to the Ministry of
Interior in Bangladesh. The embassy has no solution, however, as the
government back home cannot circumvent “the law". They argue that
those affected, while of Bangladeshi origin, are longtime residents
of Jordan and are unable to prove a hereditary link to the state of
Bangladesh.
As for the children of workers from Bangladesh, the embassy says
that their cases remain under consideration. This means they are
shelved until further notice - which means no time soon - or rather,
the embassy thinks that the host country is responsible for this
issue: "At some point, we must find a solution."
We contacted the Philippine and Sri Lankan embassies. But, at the
time of publication of this investigation, we are yet to receive a
response.
This investigation was completed with support from ARIJ
This investigation was published in Arabic on the following:
