The Philippine authorities should abolish all recruitment fees for its overseas workers, in line with internationally accepted definitions, and implement a series of other reforms to effectively incentivize fair and ethical recruitment in the country...

FairSquare also recommended that the authorities institute an ethical recruitment framework into its licensing and regulatory machinery, pass legislation that explicitly prohibits Philippine lending agencies from selling migrant worker debt to foreign lending agencies, and enable prospective new agencies to obtain a license without having already identified new markets and received job orders. The report commended the Philippines’s efforts in a range of areas, including its impressive legal and regulatory framework and its extensive and well-resourced overseas bureaucracy, which can provide direct support and assistance to its overseas workforce, its use of standard employment contracts and its efforts to exercise some level of control over foreign employers and recruitment agents. It also recognised the progress that the Philippines had made in tackling illegal recruitment, but was critical of what it described as a narrow characterisation of this offence.