What Works And Doesnt In Reducing Vulnerability

What Works And Doesnt In Reducing Vulnerability To Forced Labor And Human Trafficking Of Women Migrant Workers? Presented by: Lessons learned by the ILO's Work in Freedom Program (2013-2023) Date: London, 27 April 2023 What is the Work in Freedom Program? 1. WIF is a ten-year development cooperation program funded by UK Aid. 2. The overall aim of the program was to reduce women's vulnerability to trafficking and forced labor throughout migration pathways to and in domestic and garment work. 3. The program adopted an integrated and targeted approach in developing practices and multisectoral policy measures. 4. WIF was implemented in South Asian countries and areas of origin in Bangladesh, India and Nepal, and in selected destination States (India, Jordan, Lebanon and some Gulf countries). 5. The ILO cooperated with migrant women workers, trade unions, civil society organizations, businesses and regulators. 6. Interventions included: (1) outreach to migrant women in areas where they came from; (2) worker empowerment interventions and employer advocacy in destination countries; (3) improving practices related to recruitment and working conditions; (4) law and policy work; and (5) research on labor migration trajectories. Methodology 1. Adaptive learning was in built in the design of the program. Lessons learned were documented starting in 2016 and published from 2017 on wards. 2. This presentation is based on three published Lessons Learned documents: a. Outreach to migrant workers in areas of origin b. Recruitment of migrant workers c. Responses to the unfree labor of migrant women workers in destination areas. 3. We review the historical focus of related policies and the nature of current conventional and non- conventional interventions. 4. Each of these lessons is connected to specific interventions that were designed as a part of an overall framework of interventions. Therefore, none of these lessons should be read in isolation from the others. 5. Format of Lessons Learned a. Title of main finding Description of main finding b. How the finding was identified? Description of how the finding was identified based on practice or research. Links to references c. Practical lessons for programming Implications of the finding on specific areas of conventional programming Part I Destination Cities And Countries Historical Context Of Policies To Address Unfree Labor - Responses to unfree work have varied throughout history depending on how work was defined and how struggles shaped the rules and norms of labor. Different themes have dominated concerns on unfree labor during different periods depending on the nature of work. Each one of these themes implied a different way of seeing the world, a different history of understanding and very different framework of addressing unfree labor. Here are some examples: • 1. Extinguishing debts related to bonded labor in antiquity. • 2. Abolishing slavery (1926 Slavery Convention, 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention). • 3. Eradicating forced labor (e.g. 1930 Forced Labor Convention No. 29 and its 2014 Protocol, and 1957 Convention No. 105). • 4. Ending human trafficking modern slavery (2000 Palermo Protocol, 2030 Agenda for SDGs). - However, many forms of unfree labor remain to be addressed such as women's unpaid work, unrecognized informal work, work involving poverty wages and others. What Are Conventional Policies To Address Unfree Labor In Countries Of Destination? 1. Responses based on an anti-trafficking in person framework. In accordance with the Palermo Protocol, responses to human trafficking focus on prevention, prosecution, protection and partnerships activities. 2. Responses based on a forced labor framework focus on addressing coercion. The Protocol of 2014 to the Forced Labor Convention and the Forced Labor Supplementary Measures Recommendation, 2014 (No. 203) highlights the series of measures such as those that tackle root causes, several protection measures and remedies, specific action against trafficking in persons for forced labor, other effective measures, implementation, consultation and international cooperation. What Were Some Other Practices Tested By WIF To Address Unfree Labor In Countries Of Destination? 1. Adaptive learning on successes and failures in responding to forced labor. Adaptive learning interventions in these fields seek to document what has worked or not and rethink better ways to frame, conceptualize and design interventions that yield better results. 2. Identifying and addressing root causes and factors that heighten the risks of forced labor. While Article 2 (f) of Protocol No. 29 highlights the importance of addressing the root causes and factors that heighten the risks of forced or compulsory labor, very few initiatives have been undertaken to identify, let alone address them. 3. Strengthening the support base for marginalized workers at risk of forced labor. This type of intervention consists of creating a support base of constituents, civil society organizations and academic institutions that can magnify the voices of marginalized workers to prevent further abuses. Lessons Learned On The Relationships Between Job Markets And Forced Labor - Lesson 1 • The scarcity of decent jobs and the absence of social protections are factors of market coercion for job seekers, and this affects their vulnerability to forced labor. Combined, they are important aggregate indicators of forced labor risks. - Lesson 3 • In the context of migration, anti-trafficking and forced labor programs should not delink the analysis of labor abuses that take place in migrant destination areas from employment options and decent work gaps in areas of origin. - Lesson 7 • Recognizing how different forms of discrimination are perpetrated against migrant women workers is critical for better anti-trafficking and forced labor interventions. Such discrimination is a root factor of forced labor. - Lesson 11 • Alone, neither NGOs, trade unions nor women's rights groups can expect to be successful in empowering migrant women workers. • To address the interconnected challenges of patriarchy, mobility and work, communication, readiness to learn and cooperation between multiple networks of civil advocacy groups (including worker trade unions, migrant rights organizations, women's rights organizations and other relevant rights-based groups) is necessary so that they all converge in a common policy advocacy discourse tailored to multiple geographical contexts. - Lesson 14 • Social dialogue between employers and migrant workers in a context of domination can be disadvantageous for migrant workers and leads, at best, to concession bargaining. • Negotiating from a position of weakness is never advisable as it can result in migrant workers surrendering their rights to fair pay and working conditions in exchange for some form of job security, partial compensation or exit from coercive labor relationships. - Lesson 16 • Gender-based violence and harassment is closely connected with the gendered and social structures of employment hierarchies. • The gender and social structures of employment hierarchies play an important role in incentivizing or disincentivizing gender-based violence and harassment. There are usually important class and or ethnic differences between workers, their direct supervisors and others in the workspace. These differences tend to be inherently abused. - Lesson 19 • Without freedom of association and collective bargaining for migrant workers, reducing their vulnerability to forced labor is unsustainable in the long run. • Organizing migrant workers has been more effective where regulatory and physical spaces have enabled workers to connect, support each other, defend their collective rights and network with wider social movements to uphold their rights. In the absence of regulatory space, ad-hoc measures creating physical safe spaces (such as workers' centers) or regulatory space (such as measures enabling freedom of association) are necessary, albeit subject and vulnerable to strong counter-pressure and political vicissitudes - Lesson 20 • Using trade union membership numbers as the sole indicator of effective worker organizing can be misleading and harmful. • Donors, governments, international organizations and trade unions sometimes set ambitious quantitative targets for worker memberships in unions to justify their institutional legitimacy. While keeping track of membership in a union is important, it is not necessarily an indicator of effective organizing. Qualitative indicators are equally important in assessing the effectiveness of worker organizing. - Lesson 34 • While migration may be profitable for employers who hire migrant workers because they are more affordable and amenable than local workers, such practices can generate labor market loopholes that erode decent work practices and the employment prospects of local workers. • Migrant workers should not be blamed for taking the jobs of local workers. It is the practice of hiring migrant workers into substandard working conditions that is to blame - Lesson 35 • - Migration bans increase vulnerability to human trafficking. Lesson 36 • The notion that migrant workers can be easily reintegrated into their home countries through ad-hoc crisis-related reintegration programs runs against the labor market realities that prompted them to migrate in the first place. • In the case of women migrants, reintegration can even mean a process of disempowerment. - Lesson 50 • In the context of the scarcity of decent work, most labor relationships - however abusive they may be are consensual even if they are unfree. In such contexts, forced labor frameworks, including forced labor surveys, are not always helpful in identifying abusive labor relationships. Assumptions Of Programs To Address Unfree Labor And Better Practices Characteristics Of Conventional Practices Outreach to workers Assistance to victims Characteristics Of Better Practice Provision of services to all workers based on and tailored to their demands Support to migrant workers exclusively Support freedom of association and selfthrough unions, specialized NGOs organizing of workers including migrant workers through workers' centers in cooperation with different organizations including unions and NGOS Establishment of worker committees Ensuring democratic means of migrant worker representation in all spaces meant to collect constituents' views Social dialogue to address workers' Social dialogue when workers including grievances in an ad- hoc manner migrant workers are in a position to negotiate without a calculated risk of facing retaliation Outreach to employers Promoting codes of conduct and ethical Advocacy with employers to address business practices recurrent worker grievances Supporting compliance auditing through Fully involving workers feedback in both third parties compliance audits and labor inspection processes Policy advocacy Framing policy responses through a criminal Framing policy responses through labor justice angle focusing on anti-trafficking rights approaches tailored to respective prevention, prosecution and protection, as occupational sectors, review of migrant well as modern slavery focusing on extreme worker policies including sponsorship cases of abuse. systems and careful monitoring of employment and unemployment dynamics. Workers' consent used as a key framework to Unfree labor a more enabling framework to address forced labor analyse vulnerability to forced labor Technical advice to Governments and Technical advice to constituents constituents based on available evidence complimented by network of advocacy base supported by wide array of civil groups representing workers, migrants and women Rallying multi-stakeholder cooperation for Rallying support to sustainably address eradicating modern slavery, trafficking in common and recurrent grievances of workers persons and/or forced labor and especially migrant workers Capacity building on victim protections for Capacity building preceded by legal relevant parties / constituents guarantees enabling different labor constituents to enforce fundamental principles and rights at work