The End Migrant Worker Unfreedom Project
The End Migrant Worker Unfreedom (EMWU) project is a historical and ongoing initiative aimed at dismantling the systemic conditions that keep migrant workers unfree and undermine their dignity.
The project challenges employer-tied labour migration systems, directly attacking state-imposed risks of rights violations, forced labour and human trafficking.
RHFW advances this work through a two-pronged strategy.
First, it pursues impact litigation challenging employer-tying immigration restrictions as unjustifiable state violations of workers’ fundamental rights to equality, liberty, life and security of the person. Their constitutional class action seeks a court declaration invalidating federal restrictions on the right to change employers and monetary damages, both to compensate for the harms caused and to deter future, similar rights-infringing conduct by the government.
At the same time, RHFW supports and amplifies advocacy efforts of survivors, migrant worker groups and their allies to push the legislature to adopt a more just and sustainable labour migration system recognizing basic rights for migrant workers.
Rather than treating human trafficking like isolated cases of abuse, the RHFW’s EMWU project confronts the legal and policy structures that enable coercion, forced labour, and trafficking.
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