Government officials, employers, workers’ organisations, recruitment agencies, civil society groups and development partners have undergone training aimed at promoting fairer, gender-sensitive recruitment practices to better safeguard Ghanaian migrant workers. The two-day sensitisation workshop, held on October 29-30, 2026, was jointly organised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) under the EU-funded Support to Free Movement of Persons and Migration in West Africa Project Phase II (FMM West Africa II) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, through its Programme Shaping Development-Oriented Migration (MEG), commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It followed an earlier training for 10 African diplomatic missions in the Gulf States, was grounded in the ILO Guidelines for Gender Equality in Fair Recruitment, and came at a timely moment as Ghana reviews key policies including its National Labour Migration Policy.
The workshop presented findings from a gender analysis of labour migration along the Ghana-Nigeria corridor to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and explored how the ILO guidelines can be applied in Ghana. While labour migration creates employment, builds skills and improves livelihoods, participants noted that women and men experience it differently, with women in domestic and informal work facing greater exposure to exploitative recruitment, abuse, discrimination and weak protection. Participants identified entry points for advancing gender equality across the migration cycle, calling for stronger protection and grievance mechanisms, including for refugees and asylum seekers, and for improved gender-disaggregated data to inform policy.
