A/HRC/15/20* • In addition, States should establish blacklists prohibiting households, in which one member has been found to have abused or exploited a live-in domestic worker, from employing other workers. 96. Migrant domestic workers are vulnerable to subjugation to servitude, since they often have a precarious migration status and face prejudices. The Special Rapporteur recommends that States: • Abolish immigration regimes that tie a visa to the sponsorship of a single employer, including for domestic workers employed by diplomats. • Recognize migrant domestic workers’ right to freely choose where they reside and abolish any live-in requirements stipulated by law or regulations. • Consider creating a special immigration status providing a right to stay for migrant domestic workers, who substantiate allegations of serious abuse or exploitation by employers. • Foster their multilateral and bilateral cooperation to accredit and regulate recruitment and placement agencies. Bilateral agreements on migrant domestic work should be binding, based on international standards; guarantee nondiscrimination compared to local workers and provide for effective mechanisms to ensure compliance. • Ensure Immigration and labour authorities cooperate to register all migrant workers and inform them about their rights in a language they can understand. • Diligently investigate credible allegations of abuse or exploitation committed by their diplomats and prosecute perpetrators. If no criminal action is taken by the sending State, host States should demand that diplomatic immunity is lifted or, failing that, declare the alleged perpetrator in serious cases persona non grata, while granting independent resident rights to the victim. 97. Domestic workers have made impressive gains in organizing themselves across the globe. More efforts are needed, however, to empower individual workers. The Special Rapporteur recommends: • Working with existing domestic workers associations and cooperatives, labour unions should make greater efforts to include domestic workers, including migrant domestic workers. • States should abolish all legal or factual obstacles preventing domestic workers from exercising their human right to freely associate, including in trade unions. • National authorities, cooperating with domestic workers associations, unions and national human rights institutions, should launch campaigns to inform prospective and current domestic workers what rights they have and how they can enforce them. Information has to be provided in places and languages accessible to all domestic workers, including migrants. 98. Normative action at the international level reflects has long been a reflection of the indolence of many States to provide effective protection against domestic servitude at the national level. The Special Rapporteur therefore welcomes the fact that the ILO finally resolved to adopt a convention on decent standards for domestic work and hopes that recommendations contained in this report will be reflected in the Convention. The Special Rapporteur recommends that: • States cooperate within the ILO to ensure that the future convention on decent standards domestic work is based on the major human rights treaties and GE.10-15169 21

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