Empowerment of Sri Lankan Female Workers with International Law

Abstract

This paper was written with the intention to view and examine the various challenges encountered by the Sri Lankan female workers who work in the International grounds as domestic-aid and to explore how these female workers contribute to the development of Sri Lanka. It intends to examine the various violations of International Law with regards to these female workers and ways to avoid such violations by empowering them. There is a progressive upsurge in the female workers who leave Sri Lanka annually and they contribute to bringing in a significant amount of foreign currency to Sri Lanka’s economy. The literature affirms that there were many cases where Sri Lankan female workers had to face refusal of payments, violation of their employment contract, physical, mental and sexual assaults, and sometimes death. Thus, this can be seen as a significant threat to human rights of these workers. Sri Lanka affiliates with various international treaties and therefore must find means to protect the rights of these female workers are safeguarded. This paper strongly recommends Sri Lanka to implement legal policies, international agreements and national legislations which will safeguard the human rights of these female workers. Currently existing national laws are insufficient since the human rights of these females are violated frequently. The International laws will provide and protect the female workers, but the existing Sri Lankan judiciary does not support that fully. This paper recommends domestic laws, policies, and, practices to be instigated in order to identify resolutions to fight the key concerns.