A/78/180 migrant workers include eligibility for medical insurance systems, language and cultural barriers, lack of access to transportation and information about health -care services, hours of work and clinic and family doctor roster systems that are reserved for residents, etc. Migrant workers in employer-provided housing may also face loss of housing if they are unable to work owing to illness or injury. Migrant workers face barriers in accessing both acute and long-term health care for occupational illness and injury, and those injured at work or who have an occupational illness face considerable barriers in accessing workers’ compensation systems built for citizen workers. In some cases, workers have been returned to countries of origin prior to receiving health care and filing compensation claims. Non-emergency health care is particularly out of reach for migrant workers, for example routine medical exams and screening for cancer or other illness, reproductive health care, mental health care, ocular care and dentistry. Prior to the pandemic, in many countries migrant workers had little access to vaccines, preventive medicine, physiotherapy or other non-emergency treatments. Few have access to low-cost pharmaceuticals or medications, even when medically necessary (e.g., diabetes medication). 48. Furthermore, access to temporary labour migration programmes is often contingent on passing a series of medical tests pre-departure, on arrival and during their time on these schemes. Some of this mandatory testing is discriminatory (such as for HIV or pregnancy), and migrants who do not pass these tests are denied visas in some of the major destination countries, even if the injury or illness was sustained during work in the country of employment. These are violations that regularly result in long-term health consequences for migrant workers, including the injury or death of migrant workers, especially those engaged in low-wage work: violations of the right to life that authorities often attribute to “natural causes.” 56 49. Irregular migrant workers face additional health risks (e.g., lack of safety training or personal protective equipment) and barriers to accessing health care. Many will not qualify for access to government-funded health-care services which may be restricted to those with legal documentation, and/or they may not be able to pay the high cost of private health-care services or access assistance for uninsured patients. Furthermore, many will not even seek health-care services owing to lack of firewalls between health-care services and immigration enforcement, which is in contravention of general recommendation No. 38 (2020) of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on trafficking in women and girl s in the context of global migration (CEDAW/C/GC/38), paragraph (54) (c), which highlights the importance of access to care and reporting without fear of reprisals or loss of status, in particular in the context of trafficking of women and girls. Women migrant workers face particular health risks in their workplaces owing to their concentration in care work, which heightens their exposure to infectious and communicable disease, as well as sexually transmitted infections and sexual and gender-based violence. For women migrant workers, accessing sexual and reproductive health rights is particularly challenging, since workers risk termination of employment for pregnancy and reprisals for reporting sexual and gender-based violence. 9. Access to justice and accountability measures 50. Access to justice is a basic rule of the law 57,58 and is fundamental in protecting all migrant workers. This requires full legal equality and equal protection under the law, access to fair dispute resolution and access to remedy. Migrant workers’ access to justice is clearly stipulated in law under ILO-C190 article 10 (a) and (b (i–v)). Legal systems are often not adjusted to the particular vulnerabilities of migrant workers, in particular __________________ 56 57 58 23-13823 OHCHR, We Wanted Workers, but Human Beings Came (see footnote 7). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 14. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, art. 8. 15/21