This project involved empirical research and thought leadership on the responsibilities of states and business to protect the rights of migrant workers within the recruitment process and to ensure they can access remedies for abuses. We have convened and addressed numerous regional and global forums on migrant worker recruitment in the Asia Pacific region, including one of the earliest regional forums on the issue.
Right-based governance of recruitment by states
Governance of Migrant Worker Recruitment: A Rights-Based Framework for Countries of Origin sets out a rights-based governance framework to address systemic recruiter misconduct, based on empirical studies conducted across Asia. The paper builds on work undertaken in collaboration with the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and civil society organisations over several years to improve governance of recruitment in the country from the village to the national level, as well as advisory work with governments, civil society organisations and UN bodies in the region.
A multi-stakeholder approach to rights protection in recruitment
In The Business of Migrant Worker Recruitment: Who has the Responsibility and Leverage to Protect Rights?, Bassina Farbenblum and Justine Nolan identify the unique forms of leverage that state, business, and civil society actors can exert to establish a global market that commercially incentivizes fair recruiters and the suppliers that engage them, along with a transnational governance framework that identifies and sanctions those that do not.
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