The Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (AsiaDHRRA) joined in the Launching of Addressing Labor Exploitation in Fishing in ASEAN (ALFA) by DAI organized on 28 November 2022 at the ASEAN Secretariat in Bali, Indonesia.

The ALFA project aims to increase the capacity of ASEAN’s member countries to advance issues of forced labor and abusive working conditions in the fishing industry in the region.  Regional policy, implementation, and scale-up engagement among stakeholders to tackle the pervasive issues of forced labor and trafficking are the program’s primary focus in ASEAN.  Moreover, the initiative will work with ASEAN’s Senior Labour Officials Meeting (SLOM), which represents the ministries of labor, to further monitor, report, and address labor exploitation in the fishing industry.

Ms. Marlene Ramirez, AsiaDHRRA’s Secretary-General, shared the project’s result research on Child Labor in Fisheries and Aquaculture Value Chain in Asia and its Linkages to Migration, a project in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  More importantly, she highlighted the piloting project on “Youth Capacity Development Towards Decent Employment Opportunity for Sustainable Agriculture,” a cooperation between AsiaDHRRA, PhilDHRRA, and the Institute of Social Order (ISO) targeting three municipalities in Quezon province, namely Infanta, Panukulan and Real.