Specific to the MRO, its purpose is to monitor compliance of the Philippine government with international and national human rights mechanisms on the protection of migrants’ rights, including the rights of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) 3, the Filipino diaspora, members of their families and migrants in the Philippines. The CHR collaborates with civil society partners and government agencies, with the support of The GOJUST Human Rights Project of the European Union, to make progress with the following objectives of the MRO: 1. Establish an appropriate system of baseline information on the human rights situation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and members of their families, as well as monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system using a human rights-based approach (HRBA); 2. Establish a mechanism to enable OFWs and their families to report rights violations and access justice; 3. Enhance the capacity of relevant civil society organizations and CHR personnel, especially in the regions to improve on the system of monitoring the human rights situations of OFWs and their families; and 4. Strengthen the network of NHRIs and civil society in Middle East and South East Asia in protecting the rights of OFWs and members of their families. The online MRO database4. houses the Supreme Court labor migration cases from 1996 up to 2019. Besides being a repository of jurisprudence, documents are catalogued by the nature of case5., types of rights violation/s and location of where the violations happened. This database is envisaged to help identify policy and program implementation gaps in the protection of the rights and welfare of OFWs and their families; guide policy formulation and reform; as well as provide facts-based arguments to promote the human rights-based approaches to labor migration. 2.2 Objectives This work utilizes the data from the MRO in an attempt to undertake an initial analysis of cases involving OFWs decided by the Supreme Court for the five (5) year period 2015-2019. It aims to answer the question of whether there are considerable gaps in migrant worker rights protection in the existing overseas employment regime that causes, or contributes to, the violations of the migrant worker rights and human rights of OFWs. The 3 As defined in Section 3(a) of R. A. 8042, as amended, an “Overseas Filipino worker” or OFW “refers to a person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a state of which he or she is not a citizen or on board a vessel navigating the foreign seas other than a government ship used for military or non-commercial purposes or on an installation located offshore or on the high seas; to be used interchangeably with migrant worker." 4 Refer to https://chr-observatories.uwazi.io/en/page/hxgjtdg5c3j The Commission acknowledges the work of the Lawyers Beyond Borders Philippines, particularly their publication, “Philippine Jurisprudence on Overseas Employment (1995-2015)” as it serves a very valuable resource in identifying the nature of cases. 5 4