Global conference agrees on a Roadmap against the worst forms of child labour

More than 450 delegates from 80 countries have agreed on a Roadmap aimed at “substantially increasing” global efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour by 2016. Approved at the end of a two-day conference on child labour organized by the Government of The Netherlands in cooperation with the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Roadmap calls on governments, social partners and civil society organizations to strengthen access to education, social protection and decent work.

Tears of African migrants

For 37 days, the Nigerian journalist Emmanuel Mayah travelled a total of 4,318 kilometres across seven countries and the Sahara desert in the company of illegal African migrants on their way to Europe. From Nigeria to Benin Republic, Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and finally Libya, he survived to tell the story of human traffickers, sex slavery in transit camps, starvation, desert bandits, arduous toil in a salt mine, cruel thirst and deaths in the hot desert. The writer was a participant of the ITC-ILO Communicating labour rights’ course 2009.

The Feminisation of The Migrant Labour Force in Sri Lanka

By Vijita Fernando 

The world has almost forgotten the plight of Rizana Nafeek, the Sri Lankan teenager who was sentenced to death for the alleged killing of her employer’s infant during her three months’ stay as a housemaid in a wealthy Saudi household in 2005.

US workers, immigrants unite vs. work visa program

By John Moreno Gonzales (AP) 

NASHVILLE — Toribio Jimenez says an asbestos removal company used a guest worker program to trap him in virtual servitude, then fired him when he complained, forcing him to work illegally. Robert Martin believes the same company kept him unemployed by hiring foreigners like Jimenez. The men have become surprising allies in a lawsuit that claims a long-standing guest worker program harms American and immigrant workers alike. The program has issued visas for 22 years amid steady complaints, and both sides of the immigration debate say it warrants close scrutiny as the Obama administration prepares to tackle comprehensive immigration reform next year.

The dark side of Dubai

By Johann Hari

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

East European migrants being abandoned on the streets

by Abby Alford, South Wales Echo

MIGRANTS are being left homeless and destitute on the streets of Cardiff after being brought over to work under false pretences, a charity has claimed. A third of those sleeping rough on the streets of Cardiff come from eastern Europe, says the city council.

The business of human smuggling on the mexican border

by Sacha Feinman

ALTAR, Mexico—I hadn’t yet taken 10 steps off the bus when I made eye contact with someone for the first time.  “Are you going north?” he hissed, walking quickly toward me. “Let’s go. Let’s go,” he implored. A strange way to be welcomed someplace, no doubt, though the question is the only one of any real import here, and it often takes the place of a proper greeting. Sitting just 60 miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, Altar, in Sonora state, is a place unlike any other.

A complete vindication, in the land of Karoshi

By Misako Hida *

“I’m so touched by this overall victory. This is what I’ve waited such a long time for. My son’s face in death has always haunted me. I have spent barely a day without recalling that face since he took his own life a decade ago. Even a single day…”

ILO: Italy violates conventions about migrants

by Vittorio Longhi

GENEVA – After the Panama government, before the Ethiopians. The hearing against the Italian Government at the 98th International Labour Conference was held yesterday afternoon, the third in the list of hearings involving another 24 countries, none of which are European. The government has been called upon by the International Labour Organization, the ILO, to answer serious accusations of discrimination in relation to migrant workers, and thus of breach of Convention 143, ratified by Italy in 1981, which promotes parity of opportunities and of treatment. The  UN agency Committee of Experts has also asked from clarifications on the Security Decree and on the agreement with Libya, measures which give rise to concern on the part of the international community.

US: Government wages war on immigrants

The mostly-immigrant workers who toil in the nation’s meatpacking industry face many of the same dangerous conditions and stark exploitation as the immigrant meatpackers depicted in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle 100 years ago.