Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Philippines

People v. Lalli

Supreme Court of the Philippines · Philippines · 2011-10-12 · National court

Citation: G.R. No. 195419
Type of case: Criminal
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Can recruiters who took women to Malaysia with false promises of work be convicted of trafficking and illegal recruitment?

What the court decided

Yes. The convictions for trafficking in persons and illegal recruitment were upheld.

In plain language

Women from the Philippines were promised jobs in Malaysia but were forced into prostitution. The Supreme Court upheld the recruiters’ convictions.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Perempuan dari Filipina dijanjikan pekerjaan di Malaysia tetapi dipaksa melacur. MA menguatkan vonis terhadap para perekrut.

Pertanyaan: Bisakah perekrut yang membawa perempuan ke Malaysia dengan janji kerja palsu dihukum atas perdagangan orang dan perekrutan ilegal?

What happened afterwards

  • 2011-10-12: Convictions upheld.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/ph-lalli-2011/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.