Fair recruitment Roadmap: A guide for national action

This roadmap is a practical step-by-step guide to assist national policymakers and recruitment stakeholders, including governments and social partners, in effectively implementing fair recruitment at the national level.

Innovative approaches to protect the rights of women migrant workers and tackle forced labour: Lessons from the Work in Freedom programme (2013–23)

This brief provides a short summary of the Work in Freedom programme outreach and activities conducted to tackle forced labour and trafficking with the key lessons it generated over the ten-year period (2013-23) of its implementation.

After 10 years of operation, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)-funded Work in Freedom programme has amassed a rich set of lessons that can help guide future efforts on key global priorities such as promoting women and girls’ rights conducting responsible business and tackling forced labour and human trafficking. This brief provides a short summary of the Work in Freedom programme, its activities and the key lessons it generated.

Understanding patterns of structural discrimination of migrant and other workers in some countries of South and West Asia

This background paper reviews the literature that sheds light on the structural patterns of discrimination against migrant workers in some countries of South and West Asia. It also articulates recommendations that would help officials in UN agencies, international organizations, constituents and other civil society individuals and groups, while referring to the existing evidence of structural discrimination to support the application of international labour standards.

While references to international non-discrimination standards do occasionally surface in public discourses, this paper reviews evidence that discrimination in the world of work is not only characterized by socially deviant cases of discriminatory abuse, as reported in the media, but is rather intrinsic to the way various market economies and political systems are structured. This is manifested by indicators of privilege for some and indicators of deprivation for those at the bottom of the social and political hierarchies, including the interaction between both.