The growing pace of economic globalization has created more migrant workers than ever before, with 281 million people living outside their country in 2020 alone. That’s 3.6% of the world’s population. Indeed, 2019 saw a total of 970,600 persons depart Ghana, with majority headed to Nigeria, the USA, the UK and Cote d’Ivoire. With the COVID-19 pandemic and global crises impacting economic stability, these numbers are set to only rise further.
However, the lack of integrity in the International Recruitment process is leading to the exploitation of migrant workers either during recruitment or the deployment phase of the migration cycle by unscrupulous labour brokers, impacting their human rights.
For this purpose, there is a need to address the issue of unethical migrant worker recruitment in order to reduce risk and vulnerabilities. Migrant workers are empowered to contribute to development when there is transparency in the recruitment process, due diligence, and practices that uphold UN conventions that promote migrant workers rights. To that end, allow me to present some of the UN initiatives in Ghana that are addressing these challenges:
- Through the cooperation framework, the UN has committed to supporting the implementation of the National Labour Migration Policy(2020-2024) and it’s plan of action.
- Furthermore, to promote ethical recruitment and the protection of labour migrants, the UN has supported the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations to develop a standard bilateral labour agreement(BLA) and model employment contacts to inform country-to-country labour exchange. The model BLA allows the GoG to enter into Labour Agreements with other countries upholding International Laws and conventions on the protection of migrant works.
- Finally, through south-south cooperation, the UN, through IOM, has facilitated bilateral exchanges between the Government of Ghana and the Government of Mauritius, as part of the process of implementing the Ghana-Mauritius Permanent Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation. To this end, the bilateral labour agreement has been submitted by the Government of Mauritius for consideration by the Government of Ghana and Seychelles to facilitate bilateral labour exchange facilitated in 2019.
Considerable efforts are underway to improve fair and ethical recruitment. The Government promulgated legislative instruments to govern the recruitment of domestic workers.
I would like to express my gratitude once again to all of you and especially IMPRAC for putting this excellent event together.
