Recruitment Advisor: Advice for Migrant workers

Recruitment  Advisor  is  a global  recruitment  and employment review  platform  offering easy access to  information  about recruitment agencies and workers' rights when looking for a job abroad.
Recruitment Advisor is developed  by the International Trade  Union Confederation together with  its affiliates and partners national trade union centres from  Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal and the Philippines that also act as coordination teams.

Working with trade  unions  and  migrant  rights organisations  in each country, the  teams  reach out to  people  to  raise awareness of workers' rights and fair recruitment based on the  national legislations and the  I  LO General Principles and Operational Guidelines for Fair Recruitment and  encourage people  to  share and  learn about  recruitment experiences through Recruitment Advisor.

The best advisors are other workers with experience.
1. Check  the rating of recruitment agencies based on worker reviews.
2. Check  your rights where you will work .
3. Ask for assistance when your rights have been violated.

While expecting the birth of the platform early next year, here is an update from Nepal. The  team   in  Nepal  have done  several  outreach  activities  to  the  migrant workers  to  promote  Recruitment  Advisor  and to  collect  reviews  not  only  in Nepal  but  in  some countries  of destination  like  Qatar,  Malaysia,  and Kuwait. Beside that, the team  has also familiarized different stakeholders with Recruitment Advisor  in  several  events such  as International  Migrant  Day and the role of Journalist organized by People Forum on 14th  December and at the meeting by National Network for Safe Migration, an umbrella organization of NGO's working on safe migration  issue in  Nepal.  On the  18th  Dec, GEFONT members has also participated in the main event of International  Migrant Day celebration, organized  by Government and civil society jointly.

Asia Floor Wage Alliance looks back

After Ten Years of Asia Floor Wage Alliance’s work, they took the last few months to develop a “short” history of the development of AFWA. Please find here the link to this new Publication titled Asia Floor Wage Alliance: A Short History on the Brink of Transition, also available from the Home Page of the website. Writing this history has been a huge task going through volumes of old documents and correspondences.

AFWA is at a brink of change or a threshold….. much has been accomplished but till garment workers get dignity, living wage, and collective power, our work is not yet finished. Going forward, AFWA will be engaged in developing new strategies to make living wage and collective power a bargained and enforceable reality in the global supply chain of garment.

Universal Health Coverage Day

Today is the International day for Universal Health Coverage, one of the areas WSM and its partners focus on for the right to social protection.

Universal Health Coverage Day on 12 December is the annual rallying point for the growing movement for health for all. It marks the anniversary of the United Nations’ historic and unanimous endorsement of universal health coverage in 2012.Last year, this Coalition launched a petition calling for recognition of 12 December as Universal Health Coverage Day – and a few minutes ago, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that finally makes it official.The UN’s vote today doesn’t change the fact that millions of people still go bankrupt when they get sick. We all know we still have a lot of work to do. But official recognition for UHC Day is a sure sign that this movement has the staying power to transform societies.

The WHO and World Bank just released the 2017 Global Monitoring Report on UHC, with new data on service coverage and health financing for 132 countries – a major update to the 37-country report from 2015.

Here are the headlines:

• Half the world’s people – more than 3.5 billion – don’t receive all the essential health services they need. This includes one billion people living with uncontrolled hypertension, 200 million women without access to family planning and 20 million infants unprotected by vaccines.
• 800 million people experience catastrophic out-of-pocket health costs each year. In other words, 1 in 9 people spend more than 10% of their household budgets paying for health.
• And 100 million people are still pushed into extreme poverty each year by these costs, with even more falling below the official $3.10-a-day poverty line.

Here are just a few of the ways people committed to take action at the UHC Forum’s closing event:
·       The Government of Japan pledged $2.9 billion in support to countries pursuing UHC.
·       The Ministry of Health of Nigeria committed to providing free primary health care to 8 million more Nigerians in the first quarter of 2018.
·       A delegation of parliamentarians from the African Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development committed to advocate for UHC based on the needs of the people.
·       The Gates Foundation announced plans to invest in better measurement of primary health care and to rally parliamentarians behind UHC.
·       IFMSA – representing 1.3 million medical students from 127 countries – committed to empowering youth to advocate for and implement UHC.
·       UHC2030 committed to implementing an Advocacy Strategy that will help partners identify effective actions for a community-driven social movement.
·       The Civil Society Engagement Mechanism for UHC2030 released a statement of principles, pledging to prioritize the most vulnerable and urge a minimum 5% GDP level of health spending by all governments.
·       The WHO High-level Commission on Non-Communicable Diseases committed to find common ground for the NCD and UHC agendas.
·       UHC Youth Japan pledged to push their own government and the world to leave no one behind.

These commitments are promising steps. As a movement, we need to hold leaders and ourselves accountable for action and results in every country. And we need to recognize advocates and change-makers of all kinds—particularly at the national and local level—for every hard-fought gain.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, that all UN Member States have agreed to, try to achieve Universal Health Coverage by 2030. This includes financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.

ILO launches Global Report on Social Protection, WSM was there

The International Labor Organization (ILO) officially launched its Global Report on Social Protection 2017-2019 on 30 November. 71% of the world's population, according to the report, has still no access to proper social protection. Africa is lagging far behind, with more than 82% of the population having no form of social protection. WSM, together with the European Commission, employers and employees, shared its findings on the report and analysis on the world's social protection level during its official presentation in Brussels on 30 November 2017.

Three years after the first Global Report on Social Protection, the ILO draws up a second state of affairs on social protection in the world. Although several countries have taken important steps in the political field, by strengthening their social protection policy and by implementing ILO Recommendation 202 on Social Protection floors, progress is still slow. Since the first Report in 2014, the number of people without access to social protection has only dropped by 2%, from 73 to 71%. Hence, if we want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, which include social protection for everyone (SDG 1.3.), then we will have to take serious steps forward.

World AIDS Day and the Access to Health

We would like to share and celebrate another important milestone for the right to health: World AIDS Day. In many ways, the advocates who drove revolutionary progress against HIV/AIDS laid the groundwork for the #HealthForAll movement. They showed us that communities could be mobilized and sensitized; that new drugs and tools could be rolled out in all countries, not just rich ones; that a diagnosis need not mean a death sentence when the right services are in place; and above all, that smart, focused, dedicated advocacy can truly change the world.

At the start of this century, just under 700,000 people had access to life-saving treatment for HIV. Today, that number has risen to 21 million.

#myrighttohealth campaign: 
This year’s World AIDS Day campaign will focus on the right to health. In the lead-up to 1 December, the #myrighttohealth campaign will explore the challenges people around the world face in exercising their right to health.

This World AIDS Day, let’s celebrate the progress made against HIV/AIDS, take stock of the challenges ahead, and recommit to rise against the health inequities that hold people back. Progress is possible when citizens stand up for their rights and leaders act on their pledges.