The Solidarity Center is using its expertise in securing and protecting worker rights to attack the nightmare of human trafficking head-on — working with unions, businesses, and communities to open migrant workers’ eyes to trafficking traps, encourage them to speak up about their experiences, and help push for better migration policies.
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| International Migrants Day, on December 18, honors the day in 1990 when the UN General Assembly passed the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. Download this Solidarity Center poster. |
In today’s global economy, poverty and unemployment drive men, women, and children to leave their homes in search of work and a better life. More and more workers are on the move—from country to city and from poorer to richer nations all over the world. The International Labor Organization estimates the migrant worker population at 120 million.
Migration and trafficking are points along a labor spectrum. The same factors that push workers to migrate also leave them vulnerable to exploitation. The most egregious worker rights abuse is trafficking — using fraud or coercion to recruit, transport, buy, and sell human beings into a life of sweatshop labor, domestic servitude, or prostitution. At any given time, says the ILO, more than 12 million men, women, and children worldwide are deceived or coerced into forced and bonded labor, involuntary servitude, and sexual slavery. The U.S. Department of State estimates that in 2003, nearly a million persons fell victim to this modern-day form of slavery.
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| Photo courtesy of International Organization for Migration |
In May 2007 the ITUC established a first-of-its-kind Global Trade Union Alliance against Forced Labor and Trafficking, with support from the ILO Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labor. In January 2008, the ITUC and the European Trade Union Confederation hailed the entry into force of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings. ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder said that as part of the Global Trade Union Alliance initiative, the ITUC is encouraging its member organizations in Europe to push their governments to ratify the Convention and to make sure it is fully enforced. "The criminal gangs and the recruiters who organize this trade in human beings must be stopped and punished," said Ryder, "and the factors which make people vulnerable to this exploitation must be dealt with."
Since its founding, the Solidarity Center has worked around the world to eliminate all forms of worker exploitation and to build support for worker rights. Our partnerships with workers, trade unions, governments, and civil society coalitions uniquely position us to create community and workplace-based safe migration and counter-trafficking strategies that emphasize prevention, prosecution, and protection.
Solidarity Center Counter-Trafficking Strategies
 Educating intending migrant workers about labor laws and workplace rights in their own and foreign countries- Helping to draft and pass improved anti-trafficking and safe migration legislation
- Training teachers to run school-based awareness programs
- Promoting union-run legal aid, counseling, and information centers
- Researching local, regional, and national trafficking trends and demographics
- Supporting common counter-trafficking initiatives between stakeholders
in sending and receiving countries
- Creating standardized reporting forms for use in police stations
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Chinese Efforts Against Human Trafficking. The Solidarity Center's Earl Brown joined an expert panel of analysts and academics who follow human rights in China as they testified on human trafficking, child and forced labor, and prostitution before the Congressional Executive Committee on China, chaired by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-SD).
Report: Immigrant Crab Workers Exploited. In a stinging indictment of our broken immigration system, a new report shows that crab-picking houses on Maryland’s Eastern Shore rely mainly on hundreds of immigrant women workers who are forced to pay excessive and illegal fees to foreign recruiters only to end up in low-paying jobs in isolated rural areas with poor housing. Cross-posted from July 14, 2010,
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Solidarity Center CPD Commends Human Trafficking Editorial, Clarifies Definition. Applauding the need expressed in a Bangkok Post editorial to address the core issues of human trafficking, Solidarity Center Country Program Director/Thailand Rudy Porter also points out that forced and bonded labor exists "not only for commercial sexual exploitation, but also in the factories, plantations, boats, and homes where traffickers have forced foreign and Thai workers into slave-like conditions."
Post-Earthquake Support for Exploited Haitian Migrant Workers. While addressing the February 3, 2010, President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca of the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons announced that the Solidarity Center would be playing an important role in helping Haitian migrant workers avert exploitative conditions in the wake of the recent earthquake.
Kuwaiti Unions Advocate for Migrant Worker Rights. During the 10 years Muhnadiramla Athula was a housemaid for a family in Kuwait, far from her native South Asian village, she never received a dinar for her labor. Although she finally managed to escape and seek refuge at her embassy, she can’t go home because her employer will not give up her passport.
Human Trafficking Report Applauds Solidarity Center Partners as Anti-Slavery Heroes. The U.S. Department of State’s
2008 Trafficking in Persons Report highlights the work of two longtime Solidarity Center partners: Sompong Sakaew, founder of the
Labor Rights Promotion Network (LPN) in Thailand, and Marietta Dias, an Indian retiree and naturalized Bahraini citizen who created the
Migrant Workers Protection Society.
Survey Finds Human Trafficking, Debt Bondage Common in Dominican Republic. Haitian migrants who cross the border into the Dominican Republic for jobs in the construction industry are among the country’s most exploited workers, and many feel that union membership is the key path to decent work, according to a new survey developed by workers for workers with Solidarity Center support.
Hotel and Tourism Workers Help Fight Human Trafficking in Kenya. In the coastal city of Mombasa, where tourism is the main industry, the Solidarity Center trained shop stewards from a hotel and service workers union about the danger signs of human trafficking.
Migrant Worker Associations Provide Safety Net for Sri Lankans. Ten years ago, Solidarity Center union partners in Sri Lanka began a process to organize migrant workers and integrate them into a comprehensive economic and social safety net before, during, and after migration.
Migrant Workers Under Attack in Russia. In December 2006, Moscow police investigated the shocking murder of a 20-year-old Tajik migrant worker, whose severed head was found in a dumpster four days after he and a co-worker were stabbed on the way home from their jobs at a suburban food warehouse. The beheading, for which a Russian ultranationalist group has claimed responsibility, is the latest in an escalating series of attacks against migrant workers.
Solidarity Center Partner Co-Sponsors Bike Rally Against Trafficking in Thailand. The Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN), supported by the Solidarity Center, the International Labor Organization, MTV Exit, and a half-dozen other human and worker rights groups, held a three-day bicycle rally in Thailand to raise awareness of the fight against child labor and human trafficking.
Hope for Migrant Workers in Gulf States. The Solidarity Center is part of an effort that brings together union, employer, and government representatives to improve working conditions for migrants in the Gulf States.
Solidarity Center Organizes Groundbreaking Migrant Worker Rights Panel at ILO Meeting. A groundbreaking panel discussion on migrant worker issues, co-hosted by the Solidarity Center and the International Trade Union Confederation on June 13, 2007, during the International Labor Conference in Geneva, drew a standing-room-only crowd.
Dominican Republic Workers Establish a Network to Prevent Trafficking for Labor Exploitation. The Solidarity Center launched a program aimed at raising Dominican workers' awareness of trafficking and the laws that exist to prevent it. By focusing on the most vulnerable populations, program participants plan to create a counter-trafficking information and education network.
Global Labor Movement Endorses Migrant Worker Rights Action Plan. In December 2006, about 60 trade unionists and representatives of international organizations met in Brussels to lay the groundwork for a concrete action plan to organize migrants, defend and promote their rights, and improve their working conditions. The meeting was coordinated by the International Trade Union Confederation, the global labor organization representing 168 million workers.
Media and Popular Culture Spread Anti-Trafficking Message in Indonesia. With support from the Solidarity Center and its longtime partner the International Catholic Migration Commission, the Farmers Voice Radio Network hosted a three-day Anti-Trafficking Jamboree in Subang, West Java.
A Voice for Migrant Worker in Jordan's Export Factories. With Solidarity Center support, the textile union in Jordan has mobilized teams of Jordanian and Bangladeshi union organizers to work in the two largest QIZs.
Legal Clinic for Burmese Migrant Workers. Hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrant workers in Thai factories along the Thailand-Burma border are underpaid, overworked, attacked, and murdered. The Solidarity Center and the Thai bar association have opened a legal clinic to help protect these workers’ rights.
Changing the Human Trafficking Law in Sri Lanka. In 2006, The Solidarity Center training Sri Lankan government officials and police officers to implement new anti-trafficking provisions in the national Penal Code.
Empowering Workers and Their Children to Fight Human Trafficking in Indonesia. More than 25,000 Boy and Girl Scouts are learning how to stay safe in a part of Indonesia that is infamous for the cruel practice of human trafficking. The effort, which is supported by the Solidarity Center, is highlighted as an international best practice in the 2006 U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report.
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