Jona soon decided that she wanted to run away and go home but couldn't because their employers kept their passports and threatened to turn them or,er to gangsters if they tried to leave. After one particularly traumatic raid in u'hich she escaped arrest only by hiding beneath clothes taken from a clothesline, Jona was determined to leave. She approached the Philippine embassy but u'as rebuffed because, she said, they had "no budget". After various efforts and * ith much difficulty, including detention in Kuching, she was eventually able to find her way back to Davao with the help of her boyfiiend. Jona u,anted to tlle a case against her recruiter but he was nowhere to be found. So-called marriage migration where Filipinas marry foreigners, especially trom more developed countries, as a means out of poverty is another stark manifestation of forced migration. Overall the CFO counts 333,672 Filipinas who are spouses of foreign nationals distributed mainly between the US (40.9%), lapan (30.2oh), Australia (7.9%), Canada (4o/o), Germany (3.5%) and then other countries; Japan, Taiwan (2.1%) and South Korea (l .6%) are the only Asian countries in the Top 10 country sources of foreign spouses. Filipina women are by far among the largest groups of female migrants liom Asia who enter into 'marriage migration' - marriages not on the basis of a relationship between partners but rather essentially commercial transaction with the foreign male effectively purchasing a woman for domestic duties, home chores and sex. These often lead to servitude, domestic violence, marital rape and other abuses. Efforts in the Philippines to stern trafficking appear limited compared to its apparent pervasiveness. In 2003 for instance, according to the Department of Justice's Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, there were just 13 successful convictions involving only 50 persons. In 2008, out of 130 complaints lodged 1 t had been terminated or closed, 112 were still under preliminary investigation and only seven were under investigation by the Prosecutor's Office. Undocumented and stateless workers. Stateless and undocumented workers are less able to assert claims on their rights and subject to greater abuse by virtue of lesser legitimacy, yet their fundamental human rights nonetheless need to be respected. The number of irregular 34 {rn vl.}i {h