Many domestic workers within Asia and those who have migrated from Asia to the Middle East experience a wide range of abuse, including unpaid wages, restrictions on leaving the households where they work and excessive working hours with no days off, says a group of NGOs.

Some may face psychological, physical, or sexual abuse and can get trapped in situations of forced labor, including trafficking, it says.

"Domestic workers from Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka experience horrific abuse," Human Rights Watch (HRW) senior women's rights researcher, Nisha Varia, said in a report made available to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

"These governments should pick up the pace of reform to introduce long overdue protection for both domestic workers at home and those migrating abroad".

The 33-page report "Claiming Rights: Domestic Workers' Movements and Global Advances for Labor Reform" said that roughly 40 percent of domestic workers globally were employed in Asia, yet the region was slow to enact reform despite major progress in other parts of the world.