Thank you to all Home Alone campaign supporters around the world for calling on your respective governments to support the Convention. 83% of the votes from global governments, employers and workers representatives were in favour of progressing the rights of child and migrant domestic workers and ending their ill-treatment.



Domestic workers everywhere are now celebrating after a long fight to be recognised as proper workers and be treated the same as other workers. Countries which ratify the Convention will be under obligation to ensure these rights are upheld.



Anti-Slavery International has been campaigning with our partners for a number of years for a dedicated international standard for domestic workers, using our unique expertise on protecting child domestic workers from slavery to lobby for the Convention to address their needs. We are delighted to see this become a reality.



Shock at UK position



However, despite the international community uniting behind the Convention, we are very shocked and disappointed that the UK was one of just eight countries which abstained from voting in favour of the Convention, standing together with Sudan, Malaysia, El Salvador, Panama, Singapore, the Czech Republic and Thailand who also abstained. Swaziland was the only government to vote against Convention.  



Throughout our campaign the UK government has continuously assured us all that it did support the Convention in principle but their tough stance during the last few weeks of negotiations and refusal to vote 'yes' has let us all down. The UK can no longer claim to be a global leader in tackling the menace of modern slavery.



New struggle



Today, a new campaign begins with our allies to urge the UK to restore its reputation and ratify the Convention, alongside calling for every country around the world to enact it. Securing the new Convention means we can now End Domestic Slavery once and for all.