[1] Jordan is a source, destination, and transit country for adults and children subjected to forced labor and, to a lesser extent, sex trafficking.
Men and women from throughout Asia migrate to work in factories in Jordan's garment industry where some workers experience forced labor.
Though the government improved its law enforcement and victim identification and referral efforts, it did not systematically investigate potential cases of trafficking that involved withholding of passports and wages.
[2] According to Jordanian laws, domestic workers that leave employers and break their work contracts should be subject to deportation and not imprisonment.
In 2016, the labour ministry administered misconduct warnings to 27 different domestic worker recruitment agencies and also shut down eight others, after receiving almost 1000 complaints and having to deal with approximately 1,500 runaway cases.
Many of these workers do not even know that they are considered to be illegal, by leaving their employers due to unsuitable conditions or treatment and not contacting the agency for proper procedures, they infringe upon labour and residency laws.
[4] In October 2016, the Ministries of Health and Labour signed an agreement which allowed for housing inspections in residences of migrant garment workers working in the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ).
[8][9] In 2020, condition violations and abuse of migrant workers in the QIZ factories were still being reported, additional enforcement of the laws and codes drastically need to be implemented in order to help Jordan employers change the way that employees have been treated for so long.
The government continued to distribute anti-trafficking brochures to foreign migrants at border crossings, police stations, airports, and in the garment sector.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported its finance department directly paid locally hired domestic staff of Jordanian diplomats posted abroad, in accordance with labor laws and wage rates in the host country.
Also, it was reported that same year, that the labour ministry and anti-trafficking departments had increased the number of inspections on those recruiting agencies in order to immediately detect any violations and take action.