Kalayaan has transformed the lives of thousands of migrant domestic workers. Our expert legal advice and community campaigns build pathways out of exploitation, and modern slavery.
Kalayaan facilitates lived experience leadership, creating the solidarity that facilitates recovery and enables those with lived experience to create change. Our thriving community programme doubled in size in 2025 and introduced a range of new information sharing opportunities including media training, IT workshops and trauma reducing dance sessions.
In the year from 2025 to 2026, 19 of Kalayaan’s community members spoke publicly to politicians or in the mainstream media about their experiences and the changes they call for (including via ITV News and events in Parliament).
Our legal team has referred more than 195 survivors of modern slavery into the National Referral Mechanism since 2018. The team advises more than 105 new potential clients each year. In 2025-2026 the legal team took on 40 new complex cases and are currently managing more than 125 live complex cases (at July 2026).
Historically Kalayaan has changed the structures that enable exploitation. Our evidence and campaigns altered legislation in 2016, ameliorating the exploitative restrictions that had been added to the Overseas Domestic Worker visa in 2012 (further ameliorations are urgently needed). Our submissions to strategic litigation have set precedents in interpretations of law to protect migrant workers, including in Basfar v Wong [2022] UKSC 20, and Reyes v Al-Malki [2017] UKSC 61. Our submissions won the right to minimum wage for domestic workers in 2024, following our campaign with the Low Pay Commission.