By Michael Oche
To commemorate the 2025 International Day for Domestic Workers, the African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) has called for legal recognition and inclusion of domestic workers in national labour laws, including rights to minimum wage, regulated working hours, rest days, and access to social security.
ITUC-Africa in a statement by its General Secretary, Akhator Joel Odigie celebrated the contributions of millions of domestic workers across the globe, noting that their labour is indispensable to families, communities, and economies, yet it is too often rendered invisible, undervalued, and unprotected.
Domestic workers most of whom are women represent one of the most exploited and least protected groups in the global labour market, despite the essential contribution of their work.
Many are denied the fundamental rights and protections afforded to other workers. Across Africa, domestic work remains informal, mainly excluded from labour legislation and social security systems.
“As a result, domestic workers are frequently subjected to poverty, excessive working hours, and abuse, with little or no access to redress or justice,” Odigie noted.
He explained that the situation is particularly severe for migrant domestic workers, who face multiple and intersecting vulnerabilities: precarious migration status, language barriers, social isolation, systemic discrimination, and, for most Africans and black workers, racial discrimination.
He said many domestic workers are trapped under oppressive regimes such as the kafala system, which ties a worker’s legal residence to their employer, creating conditions ripe for exploitation, servitude, and abuse.
On actions taking by his organisation, Odigie said: “in light of this, ITUC-Africa strongly supports and actively contributed to the recent complaint filed by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the International Labour Organisation.
“This unprecedented complaint denounces Saudi Arabia’s failure to protect migrant domestic workers from widespread rights violations under the kafala system. It is a firm demand for accountability and a call to dismantle legal systems that enable modern slavery. We reiterate that this complaint is primarily intended to ensure genuine, inclusive, collaborative, and time-bound, pragmatic reforms in the labour migration laws and practices of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
The ITUC-Africa General Secretary commended the courage, determination and resilience of domestic workers and their unions across Africa and beyond, saying that their resistance and mobilisation are reshaping narratives and forcing institutions to act.
He said, “On this International Day for Domestic Workers, ITUC-Africa reaffirms its unwavering solidarity with them and calls for: Full implementation of ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, ensuring that domestic workers enjoy the same rights as all other workers.
“Legal recognition and inclusion of domestic work in national labour laws, including rights to minimum wage, regulated working hours, rest days, and access to social security; Protection and empowerment of migrant domestic workers, through fair recruitment practices, enforceable bilateral agreements, effective grievance mechanisms, and portability of rights.”
He also said his organisation supports the abolition of exploitative systems like the kafala sponsorship system, which institutionalise dependency and facilitate abuse.
ITUC-Africa called for Gender-responsive labour policies, to tackle the specific vulnerabilities faced by women domestic workers, including gender-based violence, discrimination, and exclusion from maternity protection.
