[STATEMENT] Solidarity Statement on The Passing of The Indonesian Domestic Workers Protection Law (UU PPRT)

Translation: Bahasa

IMA Asia Pacific salutes the historic victory of domestic workers in Indonesia, who through relentless grassroots organizing, resistance, and collective struggle, have forced the government to pass the Domestic Workers Protection Law (UU PPRT). After 22 years of delay, denial, and political neglect, this law was finally enacted on Kartini Day (April 21, 2026), one of the most significant days for Indonesian women. This is a powerful evidence and reminder that the struggle of working-class women continues to shape history.

For far too long, domestic workers in Indonesia and countries in Asia Pacific have been treated as invisible labor; excluded from legal recognition, denied fundamental rights, and left unprotected under a system that normalizes exploitation and abuse. They have endured violence, poverty wages, excessive working hours, and the systematic denial of access to justice. This is not accidental, it is the result of structural inequality and a political economy that devalues reproductive and care work. The passage of the UU PPRT is a direct result of organized resistance against these injustices.

This law affirms long-denied rights: recognition of domestic work as work, legally binding employment relations, living wages, regulated working hours and rest, protection from violence and exploitation, access to social security, the right to hold personal documents, state accountability, protection for child domestic workers, and access to education and capacity-building. These are not privileges but rights that should have been guaranteed long ago.

However, the passage of the UU PPRT is not the end of the struggle as Indonesian domestic workers and supporters must ensure its implementation. Laws without enforcement is an empty promise. The Indonesian government must ensure the full rights to its domestic workers, inside and outside the country. There must be strict, binding, and enforceable sanctions against anyone including recruitment agencies (P3RT) and employers who violate domestic workers’ rights. Administrative penalties alone will never repair the deep physical, emotional, and social harm caused by exploitation.

As a global alliance of grassroots migrant and refugee organizations, we stand in unwavering solidarity with domestic workers in Indonesia. This victory belongs to the movement and it must be defended by the movement. Together, we must continue to organize, monitor, and resist, to ensure that this law is not co-opted, weakened, or ignored.

Our struggle is interconnected. The conditions that force domestic workers to migrate are rooted in the same systems of inequality, exploitation, and dispossession. We fight not only for protection, but for dignity, justice, and systemic change.

We, migrant workers and refugees, stand shoulder to shoulder with our comrades, the domestic workers of Indonesia.

The struggle continues.

Long live international solidarity!