"Accessibility & Protection"

Oman is failing to protect houseworkers. The Guardian and many other sources recently highlighted the problem that Oman is not protecting the temporary contracted workers enough. There are more than 154,000 female migrant domestic workers in Oman, according to official Omani statistics from November 2017. These women are mistreated and not aware of their rights under the Omani laws and also how to access women health services or post-rape management services in case of violation or GBV or sexual assault incidence.  In fact the Omani laws offer a legal framework that offers robust protections for domestic workers, including provisions for fair wages, decent working conditions, however, these women are not able to access the available services and counselling, and at the same time, they are afraid to speak up and report their employers and sometimes they held at houses with no legal documents so they can seek help formally. 

Hence, our project will address this issue firstly in Oman and later in all other GCC countries. We will develop 4 Podcasts, each one 2 hours, where legal and health experts will speak to those women about their rights and what should and should not be allowed legally so they know their rights and inform their employers. At the same time we will develop multi-lingual easy to use App that will apply AI to provide FAQs and many other sources and helplines so any abused woman can contact the respective authorities and seek legal, employment and health assistance.

Our solution to alleviate these problems and provide easy to access, reliable and much needed services. 

In fact RAWSA WOMEN ALLIANCE, the main implementing partner of the project has similar experience when the organization developed in 2021 an App called RAWSA KNOWS. The women in any country of MENA can downlead this App and be able to access services and assistance about any SRH&Rs or rape management and GBV related cases. RAWSA developed also another local App on maternal and reproductive health in Egypt where a lot of reliable healthcare information is provided to women in Egypt to help them achieve their bodily autonomy.

We will use the AI in very limited way, so the AI tool on the App can provide answers to the most frequent questions of the women. At the same time, the ethical issues related to confidentiality will be 100% guaranteed since the App will not collect any demographic or location data from the survivor or domestic workers, so we will not need to store this information. Hence, no registration details will be needed, so the accessibility will be guaranteed and we will depend in our enumeration and success/evaluation on the number of the App downloads and podcast viewers. 

The solution as stated will solve the female domestic workers/house workers in Oman. The intervention will address their needs to have reliable legal and health information to safeguard them while they work for any employer in the country. This service can impact this targeted group lives, reduce their exposure to GBV and sexual assault, and at the same time protect their rights as employees as it will provide reliable complaining mechanisms, SOS email and all numbers of respective authorities in the country. The App will be in several languages of the houseworkers so any of them can access this service. The Podcasts will form a safe platform where decision makers, lawyers and social workers will come at one place to highlight all these issues related to the domestic workers situations and their aspirations. They will have also the chance to highlight the available legal protection mechanisms for them.

RAWSA has been already working on several Podcasts related to women feminists' in Sudan and the post war political engagement and peace making process. At the same time, the organization developed several Apps on SRHRs in MENA region so women can access reliable maternal and reproductive health knowledge. 

The team leader, has been working in several CSOs and women led NGOs in Oman and GCC for more than 10 years. 

The project coordinator is a computer science graduate in Oman who will be the technical specialist of the project. 

Several national speakers and consultants will be engaged in the Podcasts. 

The project will be developed based on surveys that will be given to domestic workers, so we can identify the most persistent issues and their views about support and service provision.

It is still in the concept phase as we are now exploring the idea and its efficiency with the beneficiaries and stakeholders and consult the targeted groups about their priorities that have to be addressed through the intervention. 

The financial barriers is the major concern for us, so we hope that we can secure funding to implement our conceptualized idea. 

At the same time, the Challenge will provide us with much visibility in the country and will place RAWSA at the top of the "saving survivors" agenda in Oman and other GCC.