The risks to migrant workers using informal and unregulated labour migration channels are well documented: forced labour, including labour trafficking; debt bondage primarily due to high recruitment fees; child labour; excessive work hours; underpayment and withholding of wages; denial of social benefits; and unchecked health and safety hazards are all among the risks migrant workers face.
Regulation and explicit, enforced protections are widely recognized as critical to mitigating such abuses. Reforms have been urged by industry and NGO initiatives, and government actors have taken steps to make the formal, so-called Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) channel, more responsive, efficient, and effective.
Yet despite these well-documented risks and efforts to curtail recruitment abuses, informal recruitment channels continue to thrive; a remarkably high number of workers are still using informal means to enter and work in Thailand.
The focus of this paper is to explain why this is occurring.
While some challenges around design and implementation remain, the aim of the reforms- to improve conditions for workers in the sector, help to restore Thailand's depleted fish stocks and ultimately to make the industry more safe, sustainable and pr...Read More
The total number of modern slavery victims in the world today is estimated to be 40.3 million. Out of this shocking figure, more than half of the victims - at least 24.9 million - are in Asia and the Pacific. This region has the highest number of vi...Read More
Written by Mohamed Daghar. In September 2014 Kenya banned the exportation of labour to the Middle East because workers were being trafficked by criminal networks offering them jobs. This policy brief focuses on the criminals who continue to driv...Read More
The 2018 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark assesses 101 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world on a set of human rights indicators. The companies from 3 industries – Agricultural Products, Apparel, and Extractives – were chosen fo...Read More
2025 © Copyright, RESPECT International. All Rights Reserved. Website Disclaimer | Privacy Policy
