25th March 2024: Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) Public Notice – RBA/IOM/FHI responsible recruitment schemes and allegedly discriminatory practices and barriers in trade in recruitment services.
I was shared today this Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) Public Notice re: RBA/IOM/FHI responsible recruitment schemes as concerns allegedly discriminatory practices and barriers in trade in recruitment services.
Andy Hall’s Comments: “I actually somewhat agree that these schemes have limited transparency and NAFEA makes an important point that I myself have raised many times with RBA, IOM and FHI also.”
Public Notice
The Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (NAFEA) hereby issues a public statement regarding discriminatory practices and barriers to trade in recruitment services promoted by the Responsible Business Alliance Responsible Recruitment Program (RBA RRP), International Organization for Migration International Recruitment Integrity System (IOM IRIS) and the Fair Hiring Initiative On the Level (FHI OTL) schemes in Nepal.
NAFEA is deeply concerned about the unjust treatment and unfair practices that have become prevalent in the Nepali recruitment sector, particularly as concerns implementation of these aforementioned schemes, which in themselves are indeed positive attempts to promote more ethical recruitment and certification of ethical recruitment practices.
While purportedly designed to promote ethical recruitment and fair labor practices, and to encourage a responsible recruitment market more generally, NAFEA and its members have in fact found these initiatives to be severely biased and discriminatory against Nepali recruitment agencies in general.
The RBA RRP, IOM IRIS and FHI OTL schemes, with the purported aim of promoting ethical recruitment practices, have effectively created barriers to trade in recruitment services that hinders the genuine and unobstructed participation of most Nepali recruitment agencies in the international labor market, particularly in countries such as Malaysia.
These schemes in effect now impose arbitrary blocks on who can participate in their certification processes and capacity building programmes, thereby impeding Nepali manpower agencies to be able compete on an equal footing with a limited number of manpower agencies engaged by these schemes, who are arbitrarily selected for participation in ways that NAFEA and it members consider to be non transparent and subjective.
It is evident that these schemes are not objective in their overall assessments of all Nepali manpower agencies ethical standards or attainments and fail to provide a level playing field for all recruitment agencies.
Instead, these schemes perpetuate a system of arbitrary exclusion and marginalization that disproportionately affects most Nepali manpower agencies, and depriving most of them of genuine and open opportunities to undertake responsible recruitment, thus perpetuating economic injustices.
NAFEA disagrees with discriminatory practices of these three so called responsible recruitment schemes and calls for the immediate review and reform of the participation and certification criteria of the RBA RRP, IOM IRIS and FHI OTL schemes to ensure fairness, transparency, and equal opportunity for all stakeholders in the Nepal recruitment industry.
NAFEA urge relevant authorities, international organizations and global supply chain actors to work together to address NAFEA’s concerns here and to ensure the establishment of a more equitable and inclusive responsible recruitment frameworks that respects the rights and dignity of all individuals involved.
NAFEA remains committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical or responsible recruitment and labour practices, and we stand in solidarity with all Nepali recruitment agencies affected by these unjust schemes. We call upon the international community to support our efforts in combating discrimination and promoting a more just and equitable recritment industry.
Megh Nath Bhurtel General secretary
Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies
Tilganga – 08, Kathmandu, Nepal. Phone No: 01-4590969/ 4594418
Background Reading:
See more: Business and Human Rights Resource Centre – How can responsible recruitment of migrant workers move from rhetoric to reality? – Andy Hall.
See more: Electronics Watch – How to Remediate and Prevent Modern Slavery: Advances in Policy, Theory and Practice – Andy Hall.
See more: 30th July 2019 BHRRC: How can responsible recruitment of migrant workers move from rhetoric to reality?
