POWER RELATIONS
Meanwhile, stories of abuse are bound to continue to pile up for as long as Filipinas are forced into a relationship in which their employers wield ultimate power over them. These power relations are especially tilted against Filipinas in the Middle East, where women are often seen as inferior and where citizens from third-world countries are often viewed with contempt. Here, points out Irynn Abaño of the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), Filipina domestic helpers are vulnerable to overlapping forms of gender, race, and class discrimination.

Having paid for the domestic helpers' services in advance, employers often see these workers as nothing more than commodities to be used as they please. Filipinas, for their part, voluntarily enter into these relationships because they have few more liberating options at home. Having pursued economic and social policies that reduced or eliminated job opportunities at home — but at the same time benefiting from the dollar remittances that workers abroad infuse to the local economy — the Philippine government encourages these relationships and has, since the 1970s, deliberately promoted the export of labor. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, points out Abaño, has explicitly announced its target of deploying one million Filipino workers abroad annually. Workers running away from their employers do nothing to reach this target.

In an effort to curb abuses against Filipinos abroad, the CMA and other groups have been pushing the government to demand that OFW-receiving countries sign an international covenant that guarantees the rights of migrant workers. But even Abaño concedes that this "covenant" has no enforcement mechanisms and prescribes no penalties. They have, however, also demanded that Manila pursue bilateral agreements with host-countries.

Yet as Abaño herself recognizes, the Philippine government really has no bargaining power because host governments know fully well that it is desperate for jobs. Hence, it will do everything and accept anything that will provide employment opportunities for the locally unemployed and that will earn dollars to pay for the countries' imports. Offered overseas employment opportunities for its citizens, the Philippine government will not walk away, even if these leave Filipinos vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Millions of its citizens are also willing to take the risk. With few employment opportunities waiting for them, many of those waiting here for the buses to take them home to the Philippines confess they are not sure what future awaits them back home. Some are resigned to come back to Lebanon when the fighting stops. "You think you'll be away long? You'll be back soon!" one Filipino taunts them half-jokingly.

The long-term solution to reduce and prevent abuses is to extricate Filipinas from the relations of powerlessness that they find themselves in. "Ultimately," says Abaño, "the real solution to the problem of abused OFWs is for the government to pursue full employment policies and to work for genuine development at home so that working abroad will just be one option."

Until then, Israel's missile launchers may fall silent, but Filipina workers may still find that jumping off buildings in lands far away from home may be the only way to escape their troubled lives.

Herbert Docena is a researcher with Focus on the Global South, an international research and advocacy organization.