The Cotton Campaign—a global coalition of human rights, labor, responsible investor and business organizations—yesterday ended its call for a global boycott of Uzbek cotton at an event hosted by the country’s Ministry of Labor for media, activists and government...
The Solidarity Center workers with partners like those in Kenya to end labor trafficking of migrant workers. Credit: Solidarity Center/Caroline Kasina
The Solidarity Center advocates an approach to combating human trafficking that puts worker rights at the forefront of solutions and calls for the labor movement to be involved.
Trafficking for forced labor results from the absence of human rights and effective governance. It often occurs in countries that restrict civic freedoms, have weak rule of law and prevent the exercise of the right to freedom of speech, assembly and association—including the right to form or join a trade union to represent their interests.
Trafficking for forced labor also thrives in un- or under-regulated supply chains and so combating trafficking must begin with empowered workers who can stand up to exploitation when it occurs.
Migrant workers are especially targets of human trafficking and forced labor. Corrupt labor brokers lie about the wages and working conditions workers should expect in a destination country and charge such huge fees for securing work that migrant workers cannot repay them even after years on the job, forcing them to remain in dangerous working conditions because their debt is too great. Employers use work visas and threats of deportation to exploit workers for forced labor.
With migrant workers, trade unions, human rights NGOs, governments and civil society coalitions around the globe, the Solidarity Center raises awareness about the causes and the extent of trafficking for forced labor and implements programs with our partners worldwide to combat this scourge. These programs address each of the four “Ps” that are part of the anti-trafficking toolkit: prevention, protection of victims, prosecution (access to justice) and partnerships. Solidarity Center programs recognize that we cannot eliminate forced labor without fundamentally changing how labor migration is managed around the world, how companies do business and how governments monitor and enforce human and labor rights.
‘We Are Invisible People’: Kyrgyz Migrant Domestic Worker
A study conducted by Insan-Leilek, a Kyrgyz migrant worker foundation, and the Trade Union of Migrants of the Kyrgyz Republic documents abuses suffered by many who migrate to Russia to earn their livelihoods as nannies, adult caregivers, cooks, cleaners and live-in...
Justice for Wage Theft: Championing Migrant Workers
Millions of migrant workers trapped in pandemic lockdowns were forced to leave their employers and return home—bearing all the costs even as they often were unpaid for the work they had performed, says Michael Joachim, co-founder and director of the Plantation Rural...

The Persistence of Private Power: Sacrificing Rights for Wages (South Africa)
"The Persistence of Private Power: Sacrificing Rights for Wages," a qualitative survey of human rights violations against live-in domestic workers in South Africa, is co-published by IZWI Domestic Workers Alliance—a network of domestic workers in Johannesburg that...

2021 Annual Report
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Migrant Workers’ Access to Justice for Wage Theft: A Global Study of Promising Initiatives
The report identifies initiatives from around the world that enable migrant workers to obtain redress for wage theft through administrative and judicial mechanisms. These initiatives shift risks and burdens of wage recovery away from workers and onto government and...

Overworked and Underpaid, Sri Lanka’s Garment Workers Left Hanging by a Thread
A survey of garment workers in Sri Lanka, conducted in partnership with Solidarity Center and IndustriALL, found employer opposition and harassment has limited their ability to form unions and address workplace rights violations such as increased workloads and work...

Breaking the Silence: Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria’s World of Work
An alarming 57.5 percent of women workers interviewed across all sectors for this Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) report say they experienced gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in the world of work. More than one-third of respondents said that even when...

Fighting for Work with Dignity in the Fields: Agriculture Global Supply Chains in Morocco, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico
Where unions establish collective bargaining, they initiate the strongest mechanism for protecting agricultural workers’ rights, health and dignity. Through analysis of five agribusiness sectors—including palm oil in Colombia, bananas in Guatemala, strawberries in...