The UN International Labour Organisation (ILO) addresses the ‘World Day of Social Justice’ today, the 20th February by focusing on the rights of migrant workers. There are 150 million migrant workers worldwide, and 44% of which are women. Migration is most often fuelled or connected to the need for employment, therefore workers are acutely vulnerable to forced labour, coercion, discrimination and exploitation in unsatisfactory working conditions because they are overtly dependent on their employer in unfamiliar territory.
Director-General of ILO, Guy Ryder acknowledges that ‘’many migrant workers end up trapped in jobs with low pay and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, often in the informal economy, without respect for their labour and other human rights. They often have to pay high recruitment fees to get a job, on average over a year’s wages – this makes them highly vulnerable to forced labour and child labour.”
If migrant labour is met with respect for human rights and basic working conditions according to the international labour standards, their contribution will deliver benefits to the host community as well as the families of those who are forced to migrate. This must be adopted at a global, national and regional level, and governance must be coherent between labour ministries and businesses. The Global Compact on Migration will be amended later this year and will be essential to eliminating exploitation within migrant labour, and in turn contributing to social justice.
Read here for full details on ILO’s contribution to World Day of Social Justice 2018.