Domestic Workers Convention reaches 50 ratifications as kafala-linked abuses persist

ILO Convention 189 hits a milestone fifteen years after adoption, but an estimated 3.3 million domestic workers remain in situations meeting the definition of forced labour.

The fiftieth ratification of the Domestic Workers Convention marks slow but real progress in extending labour law to the world's 75 million domestic workers, the majority of them women and many of them international migrants.

Advocates highlight that domestic work remains the sector with the highest forced labour prevalence relative to workforce size, driven by isolation in private homes and exclusion from inspection regimes.