OSH, KYRGYZSTAN (ILO News) – This was a message of the Parliament’s Committee for Social Affairs, Education, Science, Culture and Health at an offsite meeting held in Osh on May 14. The meeting attended by the Committee’s Chairman and members, representatives of government ministries, departments and local parliament deputies was supported by the International Organisation for Migration and International Labour Organisation.

The agenda included the issues of compliance with the Law of Kyrgyzstan on prevention and action against human trafficking and discussion of regulations such as the national mechanism to refer the victims of human trafficking to relevant services; model instruction to identify and refer the victims; model instruction to ensure their social rehabilitation. These draft documents were developed with support of the International Organisation for Migration and International Labour Organisation.

The deputies identified the problem of forced labour as a separate issue of discussion. In particular, they discussed the provisions of the ILO Forced Labour Convention and findings of the Review of the National Law and Policies Against Forced Labour prepared by the International Labour Organisation in March of 2018.

“I would like to thank the ILO for an excellent presentation of the review findings and extremely detailed recommendations. The problem of forced labour is indeed very challenging and the recommendations they provided clearly outline a list of policies required to act effectively against exploitation of labour in Kyrgyzstan and prevent it”, said Ainuru Altybaeva, deputy and committee member.

In a follow-up to the offsite session, the Committee instructed the Government to make a review of labour law regulations of Kyrgyzstan, develop draft laws to bring the national legislation in line with international labour standards, propose the criteria to identify forced labour, and discuss the need to ratify the ILO Protocol 2014 to ILO Forced Labour Convention No. 29.