• Cambodia/ Malaysia: Domestic Workers Face Abuse
    Oct 31, 2011
    The Cambodian and Malaysian governments’ failure to regulate recruiters and employers leaves Cambodian migrant domestic workers exposed to a wide range of abuses. Tens of thousands of Cambodian women and girls who migrate to Malaysia have little protection against forced confinement in training centers, heavy debt burdens, and exploitative working conditions.
  • Cambodia: Overhaul Protections for Migrant Domestic Workers
    Oct 14, 2011
    Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s proposed ban on sending domestic workers to Malaysia should be accompanied by a major overhaul in protections for these workers. On October 14, 2011, Hun Sen promised an opposition lawmaker, Mu Sochua, to halt migration in the wake of repeated complaints of abuse during recruitment in Cambodia and employment in Malaysia.
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Reports

Trafficking of Women and Girls

  • Cambodia/ Malaysia: Domestic Workers Face Abuse
    Oct 31, 2011
    The Cambodian and Malaysian governments’ failure to regulate recruiters and employers leaves Cambodian migrant domestic workers exposed to a wide range of abuses. Tens of thousands of Cambodian women and girls who migrate to Malaysia have little protection against forced confinement in training centers, heavy debt burdens, and exploitative working conditions.
  • Cambodia: Overhaul Protections for Migrant Domestic Workers
    Oct 14, 2011
    Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s proposed ban on sending domestic workers to Malaysia should be accompanied by a major overhaul in protections for these workers. On October 14, 2011, Hun Sen promised an opposition lawmaker, Mu Sochua, to halt migration in the wake of repeated complaints of abuse during recruitment in Cambodia and employment in Malaysia.
  • Migrant Domestic Workers in Jordan
    Oct 12, 2011

    The fate of millions of migrant workers in the Middle East has been all but forgotten amid the Arab Spring. Migrant domestic workers, the nannies and housekeepers from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Indonesia, desperately need another revolution.

  • Jordan: Domestic Worker Protections Ineffective
    Sep 27, 2011
    Jordan needs to enforce the legal protections for migrant domestic workers it has put in place over the past three years, Human Rights Watch and the Tamkeen Center for Legal Aid said in a joint report issued today. New laws and regulations since 2008 give domestic workers the right to regulated working hours and a weekly day off, and criminalize people trafficking, but enforcement remains negligible, the organizations said.
  • The Hidden Victims of Human Trafficking
    Jun 29, 2011
    Being forced into domestic servitude is one of the most common forms of human trafficking. Yet it remains one of the most invisible, including meager media coverage and law enforcement efforts. On June 27, the US State Department released its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, an annual ranking of how well -- or how badly -- countries around the world are doing to fight modern forms of slavery. The report is a sobering litany of horrific abuses, including against domestic workers, and the faltering efforts of many governments to stop these crimes.
  • Côte d’Ivoire/Nigeria: Combat Trafficking for Prostitution
    Aug 26, 2010
    Authorities in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria should investigate and close down networks that traffic Nigerian women and girls to Côte d’Ivoire for forced prostitution. There should be collaboration among regional neighbors to improve border efforts to combat trafficking.
  • Protecting Working Women Worldwide
    Jun 22, 2010
    It was 2008, and along Hamra Street, one of Beirut's main thoroughfares, women's rights demonstrators had placed a series of identical cutouts shaped like women's bodies. Painted red, each sign represented a migrant domestic worker who had died - and Human Rights Watch had discovered that they were dying in Lebanon at the shocking rate of one each week.
  • Middle East: End 'Sponsored' Gateway to Human Trafficking
    Jun 14, 2010
    Governments across the Middle East should reform the kafala (sponsorship) system that gives sponsoring employers substantial control over workers and leaves workers vulnerable to situations of trafficking and forced labor, Human Rights Watch said today. The US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report, released today, ranked several countries in the region in its two lowest possible categories for efforts to combat human trafficking.
  • Saudi Arabia/Kuwait: Investigate Human Traffickers
    Jun 7, 2010
    Saudi Arabia and Kuwait should jointly investigate the abuse and apparent trafficking of Nepalese domestic workers who agree to work in Kuwait but are instead made to work in Saudi Arabia against their will and abandoned there.
  • US: Victims of Trafficking Held in ICE Detention
    Apr 19, 2010
    It is our understanding that it is the position of the United States government that victims of trafficking are rarely, if ever, held in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. However, in the course of research for numerous reports on immigration enforcement activities, Human Rights Watch has been confronted with cases in which trafficking victims have in fact been detained, sometimes at great length.
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