Fair Recruitment in Review - Philippines to Taiwan: Falling Through the Cracks?

20 October 2021 Online

Wednesday, 20th October 2021

9.00 London - 16.00 Manila / Taipei

The successful economy of Taiwan, including its vital manufacturing and electronics sector is dependent on foreign labour making it a key migrant worker destination, with more than 700,000 currently employed there. This includes 150,000 migrant workers from the Philippines, part of the 2.2 million Philippines nationals who work abroad.

Both the Philippines and Taiwan have robust legal and regulatory frameworks to manage the recruitment and employment of foreign workers, and when these systems function as they have been designed, the positive outcomes for workers are evident. Yet as this recent 5 Corridors report by FairSquare has shown many thousands of workers are still falling through regulatory cracks and enduring serious abuses as a result.

Register below to join IHRB, FairSquare, and our panel of experts, for a webinar to consider the findings of the report; examine recruitment practices at both ends of the corridor, and discuss where good practice exists and poor practice still needs to be challenged.

Speakers

Nicholas McGeehan

Director of FairSquare

Nicholas is a founding director of FairSquare Research and Projects. He is an investigator and leading advocate on migrant workers’ rights. Nick was a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch for five years, where he conducted research and advocacy on a wide range of rights issues, including work on abuses in agricultural supply chains and heat-related deaths in the construction sector.

He has a PhD in the international law on slavery, forced labour, and human trafficking and is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters addressing migrant workers’ rights. He has written for publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, and VICE and is skilled in public and private advocacy and media relations. Nicholas speaks English, French and is learning Polish.

Bonny Ling

Research Fellow Institute for Human Rights and Business

Bonny is an independent researcher on human rights and a consulting analyst on business and human rights with a focus on the Asia-Pacific. She wrote her PhD in Law on human trafficking and China, at the Irish Centre of Human Rights of the National University of Ireland, Galway, and is an expert on human trafficking and contemporary slavery.

Bonny has a rich and diverse professional background in international diplomacy. She has worked with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina on minority returns, the UN Mission in Liberia on post-conflict reconstruction, and UNESCO on basic education. In 2004, she was part of the UN legal team that worked on the peace talks for the island of Cyprus. Bonny was an election observer for the referendum on East Timor’s independence and also for the OSCE in the Republic of Georgia and Albania.

Since 2019, Bonny is based in the UK. She consults for ECOFACT on ESG regulatory developments in Asia and holds research affiliation as a Senior Research Fellow with the Cambridge Centre for Applied Research on Human Trafficking.

Ellene Sana

Executive Director Center for Migrant Advocacy

For many years, Ellene Sana has been a human rights activist and is now a full-time migrant rights advocate. She was an activist in the movement for independence and democracy in East Timor and Burma and in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. As migrants rights activist and Executive Director of Center for Migrant Advocacy, she is a facilitator in international forums on migration issues.

Ellene Sana is a civil engineer by profession and has been building bridges of solidarity across nations and peoples with her work.

Lennon Ying-Dah Wong

Director of Serve the People

Lennon Ying-Dah Wong is the Director of the Department of Policies on Migrant Workers of Serve the People Association. Based in Taiwan, Lennon Ying-Dah Wong has more than 10 years of experience when defending labour rights in the field and in CSOs.

Tseng Wen-hsueh

Lawmaker from the Miaoli County, Taiwan

As the Miaoli city councilor, Tseng Wen-hsueh has been highly critical of the government for neglecting migrant workers during the pandemic COVID-19. Being an independent politician, he has exposed the precarious conditions of migrant workers and has spoken out for their rights.

Marie Apostol

Founder of Fair Hiring Project

Marie is the founder and President of The Fair Hiring Initiative (TFHI). She spearheads supply chain initiatives worldwide to address recruitment-related debt bondage and modern-day slavery. She has trained and consulted for companies such as Starbucks, Apple, The Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Gap, Levi Strauss, Hewlett-Packard, New Balance, Hershey’s and Motorola, in the improvement of internal and supply-chain-level programs, systems, and organizational competencies for managing Corporate Social Responsibility.

Prior to her work with Verité, Marie served as an independent consultant on poverty alleviation and social reform and worked on projects for the Philippine Government, bilateral agencies, international NGOs, and a number of UN agencies.