Improving Human Rights in Indonesia and Taiwan

Global Labor Justice - International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF), Greenpeace Southeast Asia (GPSEA), and union partners will launch a joint campaign to end debt bondage of Indonesian migrant fishers in Taiwan’s distant water fishing industry. At the present time, Indonesian migrant fishermen have little say about their recruitment and employment conditions when working in Taiwan’s distant water fishing industry. They are employed under a discriminatory employment scheme in Taiwan, subject to predatory practices of manning agencies and fishing companies and lack access to unions to represent their interests against powerful actors in the industry. The campaign will explore a model bilateral migration agreement between Taiwan and Indonesia and other policy solutions aimed at ending the pervasive practice of charging migrant fishermen recruitment fees and related costs that place them into debt and make them vulnerable to forced labor. The project will support transnational collaboration among unions across Taiwan and Indonesia to play a vital role in developing and monitoring an enforceable migration agreement with the ability to shift power imbalances and end debt bondage in the fishing industry.