Fair Recruitment Forward: Building capacities and bilateral cooperation to advance labour migration governance

Migration is a structural feature of labour markets, yet weak governance and unfair recruitment practices, such as contract deception, illegal recruitment fees, and discrimination, continue to undermine decent work, expose workers to exploitation, and distort labour markets. These risks are particularly acute for migrant workers, who face heightened vulnerability to forced labour, debt bondage, and barriers to justice. Women migrant workers are disproportionately affected, often confined to low-paid, informal jobs with limited protections.

Building on the ILO’s Fair Recruitment Initiative and aligned with the Fair Recruitment Strategy 2026–2030, the project promotes rights-based recruitment and prevention of trafficking and forced labour. It adopts a comprehensive, tripartite approach, engaging governments, employers, workers’ organizations, and private recruitment agencies to scale up fair recruitment through law and policy reform, capacity building, and multi-stakeholder cooperation.

Thematic areas

• Fair recruitment for decent work.
• Compliance and fair business practices among private recruitment agencies.
• Negotiation and implementation of Bilateral Labour Migration Agreements (BLMAs).

Objectives

By embedding peer learning, promoting synergies with ongoing ILO and GIZ initiatives, and leveraging existing networks, the project ensures sustainability and ownership. Ultimately, Fair Recruitment Forward aims to increase ILO constituents’ capacity and collaboration to develop and effectively implement fair and effective labour migration governance frameworks, improve fair recruitment legal framework and practices, and protect migrant workers (aligned with the ILO Fair Recruitment Strategy 2026–30).

• Outcome 1. Enhanced knowledge, tools, and training offers on fair recruitment are available and used by constituents.
• Outcome 2. Global and regional stakeholders access capacity building and peer-to-peer learning on fair recruitment, including specific gender and disability inclusion components.
• Outcome 3. Subregional and interregional cooperation on fair recruitment and labour migration strengthened.
• Outcome 4. Communication, visibility, and dissemination of fair recruitment knowledge are strengthened.

Activities

Activities will combine global knowledge development with targeted capacity building across selected migration corridors in Asia (Indonesia and Pakistan), North Africa (Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt), West Africa (Ghana, Nigeria and the Gambia) and Arab States (Jordan and Iraq). Outputs include gender-responsive training tools, technical briefs on integrating fair recruitment into BLMAs, documentation of innovative practices, and diagnostic tools to address behavioural determinants of recruitment abuses. Global and regional training courses, webinars, and peer-to-peer exchanges will be delivered through ITCILO and FairRecruitmentHub.org, complemented by South–South cooperation and trade union collaboration across borders.

Partners

The programme takes a multi-stakeholder approach, partnering with government, social partners (workers’ and employers’ organizations), businesses, labour recruiters, civil society and the media to address fair recruitment.