WIEGO Report on the Policy Environment of Informal Urban Waste Pickers and Artisanal Mine Workers in Colombia
This document presents a research and policy analysis encompassed under WIEGO´s Global Project on Law and the Informal Economy. Initiated in India in 2008, WIEGO’s project aims to contribute to developing an enabling labor law environment for informal workers, one that promotes decent work and economic opportunity, labor rights, benefits and protection, and actively encourages the growth of strong, democratic, sustainable unions or member-based organizations of informal workers. This document continues WIEGO’s Global project and identifies the public policy barriers facing own account workers in two occupational groups of Colombia’s informal economy – urban waste pickers and rural mine workers living in poverty. By making explicit the role that law and policy have played in shaping the waste and mining sectors of the Colombian economy, this report also reveals the space within which waste pickers and mine workers, and their organizations, may maneuver to challenge the present regulatory environment, protect their constitutional rights to live, work and develop, as well as the trades that they have cultivated and developed over time, and seek opportunities for growth and progress.
View list of all: City/Country Level Reports
