Panel Explores Human Rights Violations of South African Domestic Workers

Date: Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. EST
Place: Virtual. Registration required.

IZWI Domestic Worker Alliances’ Amy Tekie, Theresea Nyoni and Tinovimbanashe Gwenyaya will discuss the findings of a new report—co-published by IZWI and the Solidarity Center—in conversation with McGill University Faculty of Law Professor of Transnational Labor and Development Adelle Blackett, and former South African Labor Court judge and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, Urmilla Bhoola. IZWI is a network of domestic workers in Johannesburg that advises workers on their labor rights and conducts related advocacy and research work.

“The Persistence of Private Power: Sacrificing Rights for Wages,” a qualitative survey of human rights violations against live-in domestic workers in South Africa, focuses on the constitutional and human rights of live-in domestic workers in South Africa. The report describes how domestic workers’ rights to privacy, freedom of movement and children’s right to parental care are frequently sacrificed for wages in a sector underpinned by racism, sexism and classism. Resulting exploitation—largely invisible because of the private spaces in which it occurs—continues regardless of constitutional protections and industry-specific labor regulations.

Read the report here.