Ola Abuelkhair
Mado lives in a small apartment in one of the poorer parts of Amman. It measures no more than 60 square metres and has two bedrooms and a sitting room, with a sewing machine in the corner. She never goes out unless she has to, fearing that her family could be split up for good.
We first met Mado in a coffee shop in the centre of town not far from her flat. She picked a seat where passers-by could not see her. Even though workers from Asia are a common sight, Mado kept looking around, fearing that she could be “deported”.
Mado, 32, came to Jordan from Sri Lanka fifteen years ago. She worked in a household for a few months but then “ran away”, without even being able to take her passport with her. She looked for a way to support herself and found a job in a sewing workshop, even though this went against Jordan’s labour law, which required her to stay with the employer who had brought her to the country.
“I met Mohamed, a migrant worker from Bangladesh, and we got married,” she says. But the couple were unable to officially certify their marriage, because her residency had run out and Mado had no passport, or any other means of proving her identity.
Working illegally without a valid residency, with fines mounting up and her marriage unregistered all added to the obstacles she faced. All that had also a negative effect on the lives of her four children – Abdul Rahman (13 years old), Rahim (11), Shirin (5) and Nadine (4) – preventing them from “acquiring official identity papers.”
Mado’s children have only a “birth certificate registration”. This document allows a birth to be legally registered with the relevant government agencies. But it is insufficient on its own for an official birth certificate to be issued. Mado is in the same position as many other migrant workers who are unable to obtain identity papers for their children.
There are no figures or even estimates of the number of children of irregular migrants in Jordan, as they are living “in the shadows.” But many human rights organisations say those numbers are high.
Ilham Abu Labdeh, a lawyer at the Justice Center for Legal Aid (JCLA), says that someone who has no identity papers is effectively invisible in society. “They lack basic rights: the right to physical and mental wellbeing; the right treatment and access to immunisation; the right to education. And they are easy prey to all forms of abuse, as they have no access to justice.”
She points out that every child has the right to have a document, a name, and a clear identity in society. And that is irrespective of their nationality, as the Personal Status Law is applicable to all those living in Jordan.
A high proportion of the migrant workforce have difficulty obtaining identity documents for their children, according to JCLA lawyer Ilham Abu Labdeh. Among the many reasons for this are that the parents did not have their marriage registered in Jordan or in their home country, or they did not bring their marriage certificate with them when they first came to work, or they were married under a traditional contract.
While some female migrant workers are able to obtain a record of birth, many others do not have even that right. “If migrant workers don’t have legal status, they run the risk of being arrested and forcibly deported,” says Mohammad Maaytah, the executive secretary of the Arab Trade Union Confederation (ATUC) and supervisor of the Migrant Workers Support and Empowerment Centre. “That’s why many women in this position decide to give birth at home, with the help of an illegal “midwife”, and end up with nothing to certify the birth.”
The legal procedure of documenting a child born to migrant workers is also extremely complicated, according to Maaytah. Registering the parentage and the marriage in the courts can take several years and the costs are exorbitant for low-paid migrant workers.
In 2019, the ATUC handled around 120 cases of children between two and 14 born to parents whose marriage had not been documented or born out of wedlock – either as the result of a romantic relationship or of sexual abuse.
Many specialist agencies agree that there are other factors besides an unregistered marriage that contribute to children being denied a birth certificate. These include the language barrier migrants face, and the fact that they do not understand the laws and regulations in force. There are also cases of births resulting from sexual assault against migrant workers.
Roberto (not his real name), the 13-year-old son of a Filipina domestic worker, is in the same position as Mado’s children. He was born to a Filipino whose marriage was undocumented. Roberto’s parents were unable to obtain identity papers for him, even though they had a birth record and a baptismal certificate from the church.
Roberto should have been able to enrol in school, but having no identity papers prevented him doing so. His mother Miranda (not her real name) says that she has been unable to enrol him in school all these years, and so he is forced to stay at home to study online.
Mado’s children, by contrast, are able to go to school, for which they pay a small sum. But they cannot obtain school certificates. The school agrees to teach them on an unofficial basis, on the understanding that they will be given their certificates retrospectively once they obtain their identity papers.
A child who does not have a birth certificate in Jordan cannot enrol in school, even though this contravenes legal regulations and international agreements ratified by Jordan, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
What is more, when non-Jordanian children register at school, a whole set of documents and papers are required. They include copies of the annual residency permit, work permit – where relevant – and birth certificate, which children do not have if their parents have no legal status in Jordan.
Asma Amireh, a lawyer specializing in labour issues and human trafficking at the Tamkeen Association for Legal Aid and Human Rights, says that this amounts to the state punishing the child for the legal status of the parents. “A child does not have to have civic responsibility … you can’t punish children for what their parents have done.”
The right to education is just one of many which are denied to children of undocumented migrant workers. Mohammad Maaytah, assistant executive secretary of the ATUC, who is in charge of the Migrant Workers Support and Empowerment Centre, calls it “a crime” that these children are denied all basic human rights – like going to school, receiving medical treatment, and enjoying life like any other child. He says that Jordan takes a security approach to dealing with the issue of migrant workers, prioritising security over everything else.
Maaytah argues that many humanitarian issues – related to the right to medical treatment, protection from injuries at work, childbirth, and others – result from misinterpretation of laws related to the legal status of workers in Jordan.
Khawla Hana, who coordinates the migrant workers’ programme at Caritas Jordan, points out the challenges faced by migrant workers and their children in Jordan, such as access to health services and medical care in both the public and private sectors.
She adds that migrant workers are put off using health centres and both private and government hospitals by the high fees. And they cannot access the health system at all if they are in contravention of labour and residency laws. So they are more likely to suffer recurring and chronic disease due to this medical neglect.
For the children of unregistered migrant workers, stranded in Jordan for many years, things become worse still. They lose the right to work, cannot register their own marriages, and so the whole story repeats itself for them, says Khawla Hanna.
We contacted the Civil Status and Passport Department to ask about obtaining a delayed birth certificate for Mado’s children.
According to the Official Site of the Jordanian e-Government, to obtain a birth certificate you need: a birth notification form stamped and signed by the authority that oversaw the birth; a marriage contract, for non-Jordanians; and the passport of the father and mother as well as a copy. In Mado’s case, getting hold of a marriage contract was far from easy.
We turned to the Sharia court, which asked for a legal case to be brought in the competent court in the district to confirm the marriage and parentage. It said that two witnesses should attest to the marriage for a certificate to be issued and drawn up by either a lawyer or person competent to carry out the procedure.
Lawyer Ilham Abu Labdeh argues that, in cases of undocumented marriage, the only option is the local competent court – either a Sharia or an ecclesiastical one.
“Sometimes we opt to get a birth certificate for the child from a court of first instance, if the mother is Buddhist. If the child is over one year old, we file a legal case to validate the marriage and parentage, if the father is present and acknowledges the marriage. Parentage is established either by admission or evidence, or by DNA testing if the marriage has not been consummated.”
Contravening the legal system of marriage in Jordan is a crime punishable by a fine of around a thousand dinars, according to what the Sharia court told the author of this report in reply to her question.
We heard from the Sharia Court that it was possible to obtain a marriage certificate, based on a judicial ruling, which would allow for birth certificates for the children to be issued. But this would require at the very least a valid passport or residency permit to complete the procedure, and also that the case be separate from the legal contravention that could result in administrative detention.
However, even doing all this is not enough to resolve many people’s problems, according to lawyer Ilham Abu Labdeh. Some were required to regularise their residency status in order to obtain documents for their children, despite the court ruling.
Asma Amireh comments: “First of all, legal marriage contracts are rejected if migrant workers do not have a residence permit and a regular contract.” This prompts many to not register their marriage contracts. She argues that what is needed is for legal marriage contracts to be recognised and not linked to residency status, and for a specific budget to be raised from work permit fees and earmarked for such cases, so that DNA testing can be carried out, making it easier to establish parentage.
“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.
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.
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.”
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
