Bilateral Labour Agreements
ILSI supports origin and destination governments in designing and reviewing bilateral labour agreements that protect workers in practice, not only on paper.
A bilateral labour agreement between an origin and a destination country can set clear standards for recruitment fees, wages, working conditions and dispute resolution. Too often, though, the gap between what an agreement says and what happens on the ground is where workers get hurt. ILSI's role is to help close that gap.
Where ILSI adds value
- Design input. Drawing on frontline casework, ILSI can advise negotiators on the specific provisions that matter most in practice — for example, how recruitment fee caps are actually enforced, not just stated.
- Implementation review. After an agreement is signed, ILSI can track, corridor by corridor, whether its protections are visible in the cases our members bring to us.
- Dispute-resolution mechanisms. We can advise on joint labour committees and complaint mechanisms that give workers a real route to redress rather than a theoretical one.
Current corridors
ILSI's pilot programme operates across the Nepal to GCC states, Nepal to Malaysia, Nepal to Republic of Korea (EPS), and Nepal to United Kingdom corridors. We are able to share corridor-specific observations with the governments negotiating or reviewing agreements along these routes, subject to the confidentiality protections described in our privacy policy.
Ministries and negotiating teams can request a briefing on any of these corridors, or see our related work on consular capacity and policy advisory.
Why enforcement design matters more than wording
Many bilateral agreements already contain sound provisions on paper — recruitment fee limits, minimum contract standards, dispute mechanisms. Where they fall short is usually in how those provisions are monitored and enforced once workers are already in the destination country, at which point origin-country leverage is weaker and destination-country enforcement capacity is often stretched. ILSI's advisory role focuses specifically on this implementation gap: what does a recruitment fee cap require to actually be enforced at the point a worker is recruited, and what does a joint labour committee need to function as a real channel for worker grievances rather than a symbolic annual meeting.
A neutral technical advisor
Because ILSI does not represent either government in a negotiation, and does not benefit financially from the outcome, we can advise both origin and destination-country negotiating teams on the same technical questions without a conflict of interest. This positions ILSI to support agreement design at any stage — from initial framework discussions through to post-signature implementation review — for governments in any of our active or prospective corridors.