LABOUR RIGHTS traditional economic activities. Its land rights provisions are designed to ensure that they can retain their traditional lands and natural resources. This is meant to help preserve their traditional ways of life and economic patterns. Both these sets of provisions thus contribute to improving the situation of indigenous and tribal peoples with regard to work – but work that is often outside the formal economy. When indigenous peoples come into contact with the formal economy, they are very often subject to racial discrimination and they may have the additional disadvantage of different languages, and less access to education and training. Article 20 of Convention No. 169 therefore requires ratifying states to ‘adopt special measures to ensure the effective protection with regard to recruitment and conditions of employment of workers belonging to these peoples’. These include enhanced protection from discrimination in the workplace, ensuring that they understand the rights they have under national law, and protecting them against unsafe working conditions and sexual harassment. Special provision is made to ensure that they benefit from labour inspection services to protect these rights. Migrant workers Many migrant workers are members of indigenous and other ethnic minorities. The UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families has supplemented earlier ILO standards on the subject. Under the ILO’s Migration for Employment Convention (Revised), 1949 (No. 97), state parties have the obligation to apply to immigrants lawfully in their territory, treatment no less favourable than that which they apply to their own nationals (Art. 6). The Convention provides for equality of opportunity and treatment in respect of employment and occupation and associated rights. State parties to the ILO’s Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143) undertake to respect the basic human rights of all migrant workers. Article 12 provides that state parties should assist migrant workers and their families to preserve their national and ethnic identity and their cultural ties with their country of origin. Other basic workers’ rights: forced labour Minority and indigenous groups are more vulnerable than other parts of the population to forced labour practices. Slavery is prohibited in the League of Nations’ Slavery Convention of 1926, and the UN’s 1953 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery – though neither of them has a supervisory mechanism. Forced labour and slavery are also prohibited in the ICCPR (Art. 8). In the ILO, these practices are prohibited by the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) and the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105). 73