Turkey 2014-2015

In 2004, after a six year campaign, Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) won a collective bargaining agreement with the North Carolina Grower’s Association (NCGA). The NCGA is the nation’s largest user of the H2A program, a temporary visa which allows agricultural workers to come to the US to work seasonally. Each year, nearly 7,000 workers are recruited to work in NC through the NCGA, and all are covered by the FLOC union contract.

The H-2B  program allows U.S. employers or U.S. agents who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary nonagricultural jobs. The new H-2B issued in April 2015 enhance U.S. worker recruitment and strengthen worker protection with respect to wages, working conditions and benefits that must be offered to H-2B workers and U.S. workers in corresponding employment.

In 2012 President Obama issued an executive order that strengthens existing protections against trafficking relating to federal contractors by, among other things, prohibiting contractors and subcontractors from doing business with the federal government, from charging recruitment fees, to prospective employees, using fraudulent or misleading practices during the recruitment process or withholding workers’ passports or identity documents. These provisions address many of the areas of potential abuse in the recruitment process. 

The International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS) is an international voluntary “ethical recruitment” framework that benefits all stakeholders in the labour migration process.  IRIS provides a platform for addressing unfair recruitment and bridge international regulatory gaps governing labour recruitment in countries of origin and destination.

The Law for the Protection and Development of the Salvadoran Migrant Persons and their Families (Ley Especial para la Protección y Desarrollo de la Persona Migrante Salvadoreña y su Familia) was passed by the Parliamentary Assembly in 2011.

The Azerbaijani government continues to assume primary responsibility for the care and protection of the country's 597,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), who fled their homes in the early 1990s as a result of the conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. It has devoted significant resources to IDPs’ problems over the past two decades. It has also raised awareness on displacement, collected data, trained officials on IDPs’ rights and adopted laws, policies and programmes for their protection.

In the end of 2014, after the crisis declared in Honduras due to the important migration of minors, unaccompanied minors, the Government created the Task Force for Migrant Children. It is composed by different entities, as the First Lady Office, the International Cooperation Institution, the Sub Secretary of Consulate and Migrants Issues or the Sub Secretary of Human Rights and Justice. This Task Force is based on the collaboration among institutions in the government, together with other instances of international cooperation, city councils, media, as well as the Chamber of Commerce.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) have begun construction of a Migration Consultation Centre (MCC) in Sunyani. The construction is part of a larger information campaign to promote safe and legal migration under IOM’s Ghana Integrated Migration Management Approach (GIMMA) project, funded by the European Union (EU). The MCC aims to facilitate and empower migrants to travel in a legal, voluntary, orderly and protected way.

For the first time since independence in 1957, the Government of Ghana has formulated a National Migration Policy (NMP) to help manage its internal and international migration flows in the context of national development as well as sub-regional, regional and global interests. The Government of Ghana formally approved it in April 2015, policy which was developed with support from IOM Ghana and the IOM Development Fund (IDF).

In 2012, Ghana adopted the Act 848 which amends the Immigration Act, 2000 (Act 573) to provide for the offence of migrant smuggling. This act defines what migrant smuggling is and the penalties incurring for people engaged in migrant smuggling.