Articles & Publications

Andy Hall

Talks/ Podcasts

Workers Rock Podcast

27th May 2024

Click below to listen to the full podcast

“Pinky” exposes MULIA ONE which took hundreds of thousands of dollars in recruitment fees from Bangladeshi migrants, and promised them jobs in Malaysia, then held them for 5 months with no job.

 

23rd March 2024 

Click below to listen to the full podcast 

Why Human Rights Matter to Business?

Risky Business with Darian McBain: Asia 

15th January 2024

Asian business is changing. Customer demands, government regulations, and stakeholder expectations are all evolving under the pressure of the environmental crisis. And even the most robust business models are starting to show cracks. But it’s through those cracks that opportunities arrive. Do you know how to navigate this new normal? Andy Hall is a human rights defender, a researcher/investigator and activist, and an independent specialist on migrant worker rights. In this episode of Risky Business, Andy talks about how he uncovered – and helped to tackle – the problem of labour rights abuses in Malaysia’s latex glove industry.

Click HERE to listen

Migrant Workers – The Human Cost – Scotland Against Modern Slavery

January 30, 2023


“Andy Hall is an activist based in Nepal who has campaigned for migrant workers’ rights across the world, especially in the source countries that supply workers to the Seasonal Worker and Skilled Worker migration schemes.”

“Debt bondage, unscrupulous recruitment agents, and complex employment supply chains can leave workers vulnerable and desperate and are far more common than most people think. Andy talks about the issues that these populations face and some of the areas to pay extra attention to.”

Andy Hall and Katherine Chon talk about forced labor in the global healthcare supply chain

August 31, 2022

In recognition of Labor Day, Katherine Chon, Director of the Office on Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Andy Hall, a Migrant Worker Rights Specialist, spoke about forced labor in Malaysia’s rubber glove industry. They discuss the links between the abuses migrant workers suffer and the global supply chain. Andy shares his experience building capacity to advocate successfully on the ground and challenges to advancing change. He addresses the risks companies take on when they do not address or lack awareness of forced labor in healthcare supply chains. The conversation concludes with Andy’s thoughts on developing resilient supply chains and sustainable buying practices to ensure the respect of worker’s rights, even in times of pandemics.

Click HERE to listen

 

Beyond Advocacy to Advance Migrants’ Rights: A Conversation with Andy Hall

22nd February 2022

In this informal conversation on 9 February 2022, migration specialist Andy Hall elaborated on various types of strategies that can be employed to advance migrants’ rights based on his experience. Now living in Nepal, Andy is now traveling through Thailand, where he is well known due to a now-dismissed court case for criminal defamation and computer crimes concerning his role in researching a report on migrant conditions in Thailand’s food export industry in 2016.

In particular, the talk highlighted work with global agencies focusing on forced labor and custom law enforcement agencies (like the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to impose trade enforcement sanctions on companies that exploit and mistreat migrants.

In more recent years, and somewhat controversially, Hall has also taken to engage and work for investors and companies as advisor and consultant. Among others, in Thailand he is now Consultant/Migration Advisor at Charoen Pokphand Group – C.P. Group. This in the believe that while activists can apply pressure on companies to change corporate conduct to be better to migrants (as also can buyers, brands and enforcement officials). It’s the employers/companies themselves and their investors that need to change.

How he juggles between confrontational roles and working from within the system is challenging and raises important ethical issues that was also addressed in the conversation and in the Q&A section.

My Key Publications 

November 2023

February 2023

November 2022

January 2022

April 2020

October 2019

July 2019

April 2018

  • The Role of the Trade Union Movement in the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the Global Compact on Migration: Migration research for lobbying and campaigning (published by FNV Mondiaal).

2012 – 2016

  • Columnist Bangkok Post see opinion pieces HERE
  • Hall, A (2012) Migrant Workers and Social Protection in ASEAN: Moving towards regional standards.
  • Hall, A. (2012) Submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination – Thailand’s Adherence to Obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD): Migrant Worker Policies and Practice.
  • Hall, A. (2012) Experiences of Myanmar Migrant Workers in Thailand with the MoU Import Process (IPSR, Nakhon Pathom).
  • Hall, A. (2012) Myanmar and Migrant Workers: Briefing and Recommendations (IPSR, Nakhon Pathom).

2011

2010

  • Hall, A. (2010) ‘Positive U-Turn but Still No Long Term Solutions’ Bangkok Post, 22nd Apr 2010
  • Hall, A. (2010) ‘Golden Chance to Boost Migration Policies’ Bangkok Post, 17th Dec 2010.
  • Hall, A., (2010) ‘Guilt Lies with Thais, Not Migrant Workers’ Bangkok Post, 4th Oct 2010.Hall, A. (2010) ‘Life is no easier for legal Burmese migrants’ Nation, 10th Sept 2010.
  • Hall, A. (2010) ‘Lost Faces in Another Migration Debate’ Bangkok Post, 17th Feb 2010.
  • Hall, A. (2010) ‘Managing Migration in 2010: Effective Registration or Effective Deportation’ Nation, 11th January 2010.

2009

2005

2004

Other articles to read:

Friend, foe and whistleblower can be read HERE
 
Hall heads for Paris but fight for rights goes on can be read HERE
 
See more on the 2016 plenary resolution and support for Andy Hall from the European Parliament and former European Commissioner of Trade (and the response from the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
 
View a detailed Q+A sheet with background on the Natural Fruit vs. Andy Hall cases in Thailand.
 
See media coverage of Andy Hall’s 2016 requests to the European Commission.
Andy Halls Publications
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