Bishkek – On the 25-26 February 2020 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, IOM held a two-day training on “Migrant Workers Recruitment and Orientation”.

The purpose of the training was to identify the major issues and challenges in the field of migration and to contribute to the understanding of migration, to strengthen cooperative mechanisms between governments and other key stakeholders which can comprehensively and effectively address migration issues. Additionally, this training served as a guide to raise awareness of the private sector as well as the regional government about the context of labor migrant’s rights protection throughout the supply chain of recruited personnel.

The participants who took part in this two-day training were representatives of state authorities of the Central Asian Region: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The outcome of the training was an increased level of understanding of ethical recruitment and its main challenges. Furthermore, the training identified the needs of the private sector through the lens of ethical recruitment and regulation, while actively discussing and proposing the best practices of both the government and private sector.

Throughout the training, participants were introduced to the International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS) and its standards, as well as the Corporate Social Responsibility in Eliminating Slavery and Trafficking in Asia (CREST) and Human Rights in fair recruitment. Not only did they partake in the lectures from key speakers, they experienced interactive group activities where they formed groups with representatives from different countries, organizations, governments and applied these topics to the respective region. Simultaneously, these groups worked out the current situation of the region in terms of ethical recruitment and the corporate social responsibility, the participants also discussed the future actions needed to take place.

After raising the awareness of the participants, they are expected to use their newly obtained knowledge to challenge the risks associated with unsafe migration together with the use of best practices, ethical recruitment strategies as guidelines to identify, and tackle unethical recruitment methods.

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For more information please contact IOM Subregional Coordination Office in Almaty, Kazakhstan: Mr. Yevgeniy Khon, IOM National Program Officer: ykhon@iom.int.

The training was generously funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration”.