Gulf Cooperation Council

One of the most tragic aspects of the situation is that many migrants silently accept the exploitation and deprivation of their rights because they view themselves as powerless and without effective remedy.

—Human Rights Watch1

When her husband walked out of the kitchen, she then beat me with the long steel rod. She even kicked me. I begged her to stop but she wouldn’t until my head was already bleeding and there was so much blood on the floor. She poured water on me and asked me to clean the floor.

—E.S., Filipino maid2

Foreign workers in Qatar are modern-day slaves to their local employers. The

local Qatari owns you.

—Nasser Beydoun3

A 40-year-old Sri Lankan woman named Kusuma Nandina faced a difficult choice. There were rumors that women like her were sometimes mistreated overseas. But the lure of providing a better future for her family was strong, and she emigrated to the capital of Saudi Arabia to work as a domestic servant. She was not heard from for 17 years. Her 25-year-old daughter took the case to the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry. Both she and the ministry were told by the homeowners who employed her mother on contract that they had no domestic workers in the house. The daughter was persistent, however, and it was eventually discovered that not only was the mother living there, she had not been paid or allowed contact with anyone, including her family, during those long 17 years. The mother was allowed to return home and awarded the equivalent of $19,000 (in US dollars) for her trouble. Instead of proposing to improve conditions, Saudi Arabian officials responded by saying they were interested in recruiting more domestic employees from Ethiopia.4

One of the most recognizable buildings in the world is the 160-story Burj Khalifa, standing like a giant needle over Dubai. It is a symbol of Dubai’s luxury, and includes a spectacular hotel filled with employees ready to cater to every visitor’s wishes. Less well known is the fact that this enormous edifice was raised on the backs of immigrant workers. More than 85 percent of the total workforce of the UAE (which includes Dubai) consists of foreign workers, many of them brought in to do blue-collar work like erecting the Burj Khalifa tower.5 On May 10, 2011 an Indian cleaner committed suicide by jumping off the 147th floor of the majestic building. Like most foreign workers in Dubai, he was there on a work permit which completely governed his life and activities. Conditions for these workers can be extreme: 12 hour workdays, six day work weeks, regular work in extremely hot conditions (over 100° F), living in crowded camps with sometimes eight or more packed into a single room.6 All that is known for sure is that prior to his suicide the company that employed the man denied him leave.7 That man wasn’t alone. The Indian consulate in Dubai estimates that at least two Indian expatriate workers commit suicide each week.8

In 2010, the right to host the 2022 World Cup soccer championship was given to Qatar, a small, oil-rich country in the Persian Gulf. To prepare for the games, the country has committed to build nine modern stadiums capable of keeping players and fans cool, a new airport to accommodate traffic, and billions of dollars’ worth of new roads and infrastructure. To accomplish this, Qatar will rely heavily on migrant workers, who make up 1.2 million of the country’s 1.7 million residents and 94 percent of its workforce. Qatar’s immigration Sponsorship Law puts these 1.2 million people under the almost completely unchecked control of the employers who sponsor them. With only 150 labor inspectors to monitor the conditions of 1.2 million, it is no secret that many sponsors act as if they are completely above the law.9 The case of Omar J., a worker from Bangladesh, shows how unscrupulous employers take advantage of the situation. Despite the dangers of his job laying cables and pipeline, Omar received no safety training:

Sometimes the job is very dangerous because we have to [go] 100 meters, 200 meters inside the pipe [we are working on]. Sometimes we can’t get oxygen. We don’t do this in front of safety inspectors, but as soon as [the inspectors] are gone, the company tells us, “go, go!10

These incidents share one thing in common: they all occurred in one of the member states of the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC). The GCC consists of the six oil-rich Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf region: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Boasting a combined GDP of well over $1 trillion, these six countries represent a sizable chunk of the world’s wealth and influence. All make extensive use of foreign workers, with native populations even being outnumbered in some of the six countries by the poor laborers brought in from the developing world to do the grunt work.

The purpose of the Gulf Cooperative Council, which formed in 1981, is to foster political and economic unity among the member states through common policies and regulations that include religion and legislation as well as more financial concerns such as trade, finance, and customs. They have developed a common market and a unified military presence called the Peninsula Shield Force. The common market allows for unrestricted interaction among economic entities, whether corporations or private citizens, while the military force is intended to defend member countries against aggression, whether the threat is external or internal (GCC forces helped control the 2011 public protests in Bahrain, for example).

The flip side of the cooperation and protection shown among the states is the complete lack of security granted by those states to their large foreign populations. The GCC member states all use a “sponsorship” system which ensures that the foreign workers in their country cannot be “immigrants” at all—they have no paths to owning business or property, no path to permanent residency. Protections for foreign workers are minimal. Exploitation and abuse is common.

Despite the obviously exploitative situation, because of their lucrative oil-based economies the GCC countries shine like a beacon of hope to blue-collar workers, particularly those in Africa and Southeast Asia. Access to wealthy western countries is difficult and often limited to highly skilled laborers. But the GCC nations have lots of money and lots of work for the uneducated millions of the developing world. At the end of the 20th century migrations from places like India and Pakistan to the GCC reached epic proportions, and the trend is still upward.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

While there have long been migrant workers in the Arabian Gulf, most of them held clerical or technical positions in relatively small numbers. The first serious increase in immigrant labor came in the 1970s in response to the rise in crude oil prices. Workers came from Arab countries like Egypt and Yemen and from Asian nations such as Indian and Pakistan. Soon, there were over two million foreign workers in the Gulf. By 1990, that number had doubled.11

When the price of oil plummeted in 1985, the need for infrastructure workers also dropped. Migration from Asia tailed off by a third in the middle of the decade.12 However, migration numbers still remained high due to growth of demand in the service sector. Accordingly, many of the migrant workers were women, especially from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines. These women tended to come alone, leaving husbands and families behind, and often became the major breadwinner for their families.13

The large influx of migrant workers became a cause of apprehension in the GCC. In general, about 40 percent of the total population of the GCC countries consists of foreign workers. Qatar is the most extreme example in the group, with only 225,000 actual citizens in a nation of 1.7 million people.14 Throughout the GCC, foreign workers make up approximately 60 percent of the labor force. But much of this essential labor force is imprisoned or abused, restricted from travel or even leaving the place of employment.

RACISM AND IMMIGRATION IN THE GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL

Racism is not new in the Arab world. There is an old Arabic saying, “My brother and I against my cousin; my cousin and I against the stranger.” The obvious preference is for blood ties over other connections, particularly when the chips are down. To Arabs, all non-Arabs are strangers. Accordingly, the GCC attitude toward immigrants reflects a very old belief system.

The GCC countries need a wide range of employees, from unskilled to the most highly trained professionals. Unskilled workers are both the largest in number and the most in demand because they cost employers significantly less money. Unskilled workers are also unprotected by local labor laws. As a result, unskilled immigrant workers are often contracted for jobs citizens of the GCC have no interest in performing—the dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs. Over the years, these jobs have been most often completed by immigrant Asians and Africans, and are often associated with them. Through this kind of identification, race and racism has become part of the equation. Today in the GCC, black Muslims have borne the brunt of Islamic racism at the hands not only of Arab Muslims but also of Asian Muslims.

Interestingly enough, the GCC nations at first preferred Arab migrant workers— Egyptians, Yemenis, and Palestinians. But when these Arab workers brought with them pan-Arab socialist ideas and began to agitate against the established monarchies in the Gulf they became problematic. Arab expatriates led labor strikes that damaged the internal stability of several of the GCC nations in the 70s and 80s. Eventually, GCC governments began to prefer Asian and African migrant workers because they would be easier to control. But this meant greater friction with the local populace, with whom there were more cultural differences.15

In the Gulf, old patterns of looking down upon non-Arabs coexist with a modern attitude that money solves all problems. The words of Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik, though directed at Dubai, could easily be extended over the entire GCC: “a place where the worst of western capitalism and Gulf Arab racism meet in a horrible vortex.”16 The suicide of the Indian worker from the Burj Khalifa made no impression on the local Arabs—it was just another expatriate worker.17 Another Guardian columnist who regularly discusses the plight of Asian migrant workers described dinner with an Arab acquaintance in Abu Dhabi:

“We will never use the new metro if it’s not segregated,” he tells me, referring to the state-of-the-art underground system being built in neighboring Dubai. “We will never sit next to Indians and Pakistanis with their smell,” his wife explains … “We need slaves, my friend says. “We need slaves to build monuments. Look who built the pyramids—they were slaves.18

Almost all migrant workers have been subjected to racial intolerance. The most common practices include being excluded from potential citizenship, assigning job positions by race, and widespread contempt and abuse among the general population—and employers in particular.

WEAK LEGAL PROTECTIONS

Migrant workers in GCC states have little or no access to the local legal system. Issues such as nonpayment of wages, refused vacation time, and ignored safety standards are routinely allowed to go unpunished because the accuser is a migrant with no legal standing. The second-class status of migrants and their vulnerability to the whims of employers result in countless horror stories.

Take the case of an Indian immigrant in Bahrain as an example. The man went to Bahrain to work as a carpenter, but upon arrival his employer forced him to work as a domestic servant. In desperation, he fled deep into the desert, where he found work on a camel farm. For running away from his employer he was eventually found and jailed. But now the owner of the camel farm found use in him. The owner secured the Indian’s release, and brought him back to the camel farm to continue working. He never earned enough money to contact his family, and his employer didn’t renew his work visa. With no means or ability to leave and no legal status, the Indian became an undocumented worker, completely without legal rights. He was only permitted to leave the country when he became too old to work on the farm at age 60. To secure his return, his family had to raise more than $4000 to pay for his airfare and legal fees for being an undocumented worker. The Indian worker finally made it home after being missing for 19 years.19

Due to their precarious legal status, immigrants accused of crimes can be tried and executed without ever receiving legal representation. Take the case of a 17-year-old Sri Lankan girl named Nafeek, for example. Nafeek was anxious to save her family from desperate financial conditions, so she dropped out of high school and bribed an agent to change her birthday on her passport so she could immigrate to work as a domestic servant. Soon after arriving in Saudi Arabia, a baby girl she was feeding from a bottle choked and died. Based on a signed confession, Nafeek was sentenced to death. A human rights group hired a lawyer on her behalf to appeal the conviction. Upon appeal, her true age was discovered, as well as the fact that she had been hired as a maid and had no training or experience in child care when she was thrust into the role of nanny. Nafeek simply had no idea what to do when the baby she was feeding began to choke. The appeal also questioned the validity of the confession, which was compromised due to language barriers and only signed after physical abuse at the hands of the police. Nevertheless, the Saudi Supreme Court upheld the death sentence and Nafeek was beheaded in January 2013.20

The situation is so bad that when workers attempt to stand up for their rights, they face threats and violence. This happened in the United Arab Emirates in 2014, when Bangladeshis and other immigrant workers building a new campus for New York University staged a strike protesting conditions on the construction site. Workers were living 15 to a room, had their passports confiscated, and were required to work 60+ hour work weeks with no overtime pay. UAE officials responded to the strike by beating up workers and jailing hundreds. Many key leaders were subjected to humiliating treatment, including forced “confessions.”21

The Gulf Cooperation Council is well aware of this situation, of course, and does whatever it can to hide it from the world. When NYU opened its new campus in the UAE in 2015, one of their professors was banned from traveling to the country. The professor, Andrew Ross, is a specialist in labor issues, and had been outspoken in his criticism of UAE exploitation of migrant workers. Although the official reason given for this travel ban was “security reasons,” Ross and others believe his criticism of the UAE was the true reason. One of the journalists who covered the Bangladeshi strike and response discussed in the previous paragraph (Sean O’Driscoll) was actually expelled from the UAE after the story was published.22

THE CONTRACT SYSTEM AND ITS ISSUES

At the heart of the issue with immigrant workers in the GCC is the work permit or labor contract system used by the member states. This system evolved from a Bedouin tradition which granted strangers temporary refuge for as long as the stranger wished. The tradition was called kafala, and the host was known as the kafeel. Since slavery was not abolished in the GCC nations until the 1960s, the kafala system evolved and merged with traditions regarding slaves over time. Eventually, this system became the current migrant labor contract system, which retains the names kafala and kafeel, but with entirely different meanings.

Issues with the labor contract system begin with the ever-growing number of recruitment agencies who often work in tandem with employers (the kafeels). Fees that employers are supposed to pay are in fact paid by the prospective employees. Money employers are supposed to provide for airfare, visas, and visa insurance are paid by employees in cash so there is no paper trail.23 These illegal fees are typically around two thousand dollars, an amount few immigrants desperate for work could afford. As a result, workers will mortgage their homes, sell property, borrow money from friends or, worst of all, borrow money from private institutions at excessive rates.24 A typical example is an Indian man who worked for a construction and landscaping business. When interviewed by Human Rights Watch in 2012, he explained that 19 other workers with him were in exactly the same situation and couldn’t afford to go home regardless of conditions because they all had been forced to borrow money in order to pay fees to the recruiting agents.25

Due to high recruiting fees, the financial pressure on foreign workers to remain, regardless of working conditions, contract deviations, or even unpaid wages, is very high. Sometimes it’s too high. Precise numbers on suicides and self-injuries among foreign workers are difficult due to sketchy record-keeping, but the phenomenon is very well known in the GCC. A typical case is that of Julfikar Korani, an Indian laborer who borrowed 90,000 Indian rupees ($2,000) for a work visa in the United Arab Emirates. Julfikar had to repay his loan at a rate of 6,300 rupees ($140) a month, which he was unable to manage on his monthly salary of $190, which had only been paid once in over six months. Falling behind badly on his payments and with no prospects of escape, Julfikar committed suicide. According to his cousin, who was living at the same workers’ compound, there was no police investigation and no questions asked.26

The lives of migrant workers in the GCC are highly restricted. They are not allowed to own businesses or real estate. They are essentially told where to live. For construction workers, 10 or 12 men to a room sleeping in shifts is not uncommon. Ten Bangladeshi laborers died of smoke inhalation on Bahrain when their unregistered labor camp flat caught fire.27 In Saudi Arabia, 78 Indian migrant workers were left stranded at their camp without food and water after their employer stopped paying their salaries for half a year. Having confiscated the workers’ passports on arrival and also failing to issue identity cards or medical cards, the employer ensured that they could not escape. The employer only agreed to pay partial back wages after the Indian consulate got involved. The situation with the 78 workers was not “an isolated case,” according to a consular official.28 In the UAE, a group of 23 workers with a temporary workers agency were forced to live off of dates scrounged from a nearby farm after their employer withheld five months of wages. When their story came to light, it was charitable local people rather than the employers who provided them with food.29

Female workers are no better off. Those working for companies supplying workers to local hospitals report living in harsh conditions. One woman described rooming with 13 others in a small space with bunk beds, one toilet, and no sink or shower.30 Domestic workers also report poor working conditions. Some are made to sleep in the laundry room, on the kitchen floor, in a storage closet, or even in a bathroom.

Migrant workers are also severely restricted in their movements and ability to communicate because the kafeel, or contract-holder, routinely takes possession of their passports. Employers argue that by retaining passports they ensure workers will not steal money or secrets. What they do not say is that holding passports gives them enormous control over their employees, ensuring they will remain docile and obedient under almost any conditions. If they don’t like how they’re being treated, where can they go? Without a passport, immigrants cannot even leave the country if they wish. By controlling passports, employers therefore control migrant workers’ local and international travel.

On the issue of travel female workers are even more severely curtailed. Most domestic servants cannot even leave the premises of the house where they are employed. One Filipino Muslim woman was forced to improvise a system to purchase food. She would throw a list and money out the window to her employer’s driver, who took both to a Filipino shopkeeper who could read the note. Then the driver would come back and throw the purchases on the roof of the house where the servant could retrieve them. All this just to have enough food to eat!31

Employers retaining passports is of critical importance because employment is the legal requirement for being allowed in the country for all GCC member states. If workers lose their jobs, they don’t get to look for another one, they have to leave the country first. Even westerners employed as teachers or oil field workers have run into this absolute requirement. Furthermore, if workers run away or fail to renew their work permit and visas, they become illegal aliens—subject to arrest and immediate deportation.

Workers who are arrested are subjected to inhumane jail conditions prior to deportation. Three jails in Saudi Arabia provide graphic examples. One Indian worker reported being kept in a Riyadh deportation facility with up to 150 men per cell (with normal capacity being 40 to 60) and only five toilets available. A prisoner in the Jeddah deportation facility described having only one operable toilet for 400 men and no drinking water. The worst was the Dammam deportation facility, where a Filipino worker reported 1,500 prisoners waiting for deportation or court sentences stuck in a room together with two functioning toilets. Space was so limited the prisoners had to sleep sitting or standing up.32

Another common concern illustrates the complexity of the kafala system and its ripeness for abuse. Employers will often keep employees for longer than their contract dictates without renewing the visas. This saves the employer money, but it makes the immigrant worker illegal—often without the worker himself ever being aware! Then, when the worker prepares to return home he finds himself with substantial illegal worker fines to deal with before being able to leave. Most Arab countries have some form of annual amnesty which allows workers with no valid papers to return home, so long as they pay the fines or penalties.33 One group of ten Indian immigrants returned from UAE in February 2013 only after receiving financial help from charitable donors. Of the 1,800 workers who applied for the amnesty that month, only half could afford the fees and return flight tickets.34

The contract system is also abused by employers assigning jobs to migrant workers far different than the ones they originally contracted for. In Saudi Arabia, a Filipino diesel engine mechanic arrived to discover his actual job would be driving a tractor and tending livestock at a farm owned by his employer’s brother. He had colleagues at the same farm who accepted jobs as electricians, welders, and refrigeration mechanics only to end up tending farm animals. It seems to have been a classic bait-and-switch scheme, as all of the workers involved ended up earning far less money than they were originally promised.35 In another case, an Indian named Subair was given an employment visa to work as a gardener at a private home for $213 per month. When he arrived in-country, his employer forced him to work as a shepherd in an isolated location for what ended up being only $33 per month. Conditions were terrible, as Subair had no permanent lodging and had to be sent food and water every two days; for two years he was unable to bathe. Subair would later tell Human Rights Watch, “The heat was so intense that it burned the hair on my body, and in the winter it was so cold the water turned to ice.” When he tried to escape, Subair was tracked down by his employer and severely beaten.36

Worker safety and health are often circumvented by the contract system. During World Cup construction, workers in Qatar told Human Rights Watch they had worked on roofs or high scaffolding without safety harnesses or precautions.37 In early 2013, workers in Oman staged a rare strike to demand better safety conditions after an Indian worker was run over by a bus belonging to their contractor. Almost 10,000 workers rose up to demand improvements.38

Examples concerning the lack of safety on construction sites abound, but a single day at a hospital in the UAE in 2006 makes the point. On that day two men were dumped at the hospital’s door suffering from accidents on a construction site. Neither man’s employer identified himself. One was an Indian man named Chekelli, whose employer dropped him off claiming he had fallen down a staircase. Investigation later turned up that Chekelli had been illegally employed and was injured when a cement bucket fell on his back at a construction site, pinning him to the ground. Although Chekelli was paralyzed by his injuries, he was returned home with no compensation. The other man was an Indian suffering from a severe head injury that left him confused and incoherent. The second man’s employer left no clue as to his injuries, but simply abandoned him to the hospital.39

VIOLENCE AND ABUSE OF WOMEN

In all but name, immigrant workers in the GCC are slaves—and with slavery comes violence. Female workers are particularly at risk. Domestic workers are particularly at risk because they live in isolated situations and their movement is restricted. In a 2007 case, an Indonesian maid fought her Saudi employer when he tried to rape her. During the struggle she killed him with a meat cleaver. She was sentenced to death, but given the option of avoiding the sentence if she paid over $500,000 compensation to her employer’s family. The Indonesian government agreed to pay the money on her behalf.40

A 26-year-old Muslim Filipina endured sexual advances and a beating from her male employer. One day he held a knife to her neck and threatened to kill her if she told his wife about the incidents. Not long after she managed to escape, following another sexual advance and beating from her employer, she was told that her employer was rich and that fighting him was not wise. The local police were less concerned about her assault than with sending her back to the Philippines. When she returned home, her husband provided no support and denied her any communication with their two children.41

Not all abuses of female domestic workers are sexual. In 2012, a 26-year-old woman arrived from Indonesia to start her job as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia. Ten months later she awoke in a hospital after spending a week in a coma. She had been beaten with a belt by her employer’s wife for not mopping the floor properly and pushed out of a third floor window because she had allegedly left a bad smell in the room. The young woman was allowed to return to Indonesia but was not given any of her back pay.42

In early 2013, two different maids in Kuwait went to police with tales of torture and abuse at the hands of their employers. One of the two, a Nepalese woman, accused her sponsor and his wife of beating and torturing her, and submitted a medical report confirming that she had been subjected to physical torment.43 The other maid, a Filipino maid known only as E.S., had her story go viral after pictures of her bruised and battered body were posted on Facebook. E.S. recounted a stream of abuse at the hands of her lady employer, including sleep deprivation and beatings with wooden sticks and iron rods. E.S. was able to escape to the Philippine Embassy, which hired an international human rights lawyer to take up her case.44

Even western women are vulnerable to abuse in the GCC. In a telling example from 2012, an English woman was kidnapped, gang raped, and filmed by three men in the UAE. Dazed and left alone on a mattress, she eventually escaped and reported the crime to police. Later blood tests showed no trace of alcohol in her system, and several of her personal items were recovered at the scene of the crime. Nevertheless, she was found guilty of alcohol consumption and fined.45

Alicia Gali, an Australian manager of an exclusive resort in the UAE fared worse. She remembers going into a staff bar one evening and waking up late the next afternoon naked, bruised and aching from broken ribs. She was advised by the Australian embassy not go to the police because she would be charged with drinking alcohol—and possibly end up serving an automatic 25 year prison sentence if drugs were detected in her system (even if those drugs were administered to her without her knowledge or consent). Her employer subsequently refused to surrender her passport so she could go home for care. At last she went to a hospital where rape and abuse were confirmed. The hospital advised her to go to the police, where she was coerced into signing a confession in Arabic, which she could not read. Alicia had no idea that an accusation of rape could instead get her in trouble for “adultery” without having four adult male Muslim witnesses to back her up. She ended up serving eight months of a 12-month jail sentence for adultery.46

A 2015 story from Gulf News illustrates the de facto slavery attitude taken by many employers in the GCC. “What to do if our maid absconds” offers advice to households in the UAE who find that their domestic workers have gone missing. The terminology used (“abscond”) and the advice given illustrates the slavery origin of the foreign worker program. Formerly, it would have been a domestic slave who “absconded” and the owner would have to report it to the authorities. The Gulf News story even advises employers that they should surrender their maid’s “original passport” to authorities when they report an absconding.47 It is illegal for the employers to have these documents in their possession!

Some countries are beginning to address the abuse of their citizens at the hands of GCC employers. Indonesia in particular has had several public disputes with GCC member states, and has begun to prevent citizens from contracting there. However, the governments of the GCC countries have simply shifted their recruiting ground to countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, and Ethiopia to make up the difference. It is worth noting that the United States and France, two champions of liberty, are two of the GCC’s chief supporters and clients.

CONCLUSION

The countries of the GCC are absolute monarchies with very little military power to speak of. In that respect, they cannot exist without external political support. However, the world is dependent upon their oil, which gives these countries tremendous leverage. Consequently, they are well supported by the U.S., Europe, China, Japan, and India. In fact, the United States is both the biggest supporter of the GCC military and the leading trade partner with the GCC countries. This trade value gives the United States leverage in turn on the GCC.

It is clear that the GCC makes use of an outdated system, rooted in tradition and slavery, to sidestep the ordinary international demands made on behalf of immigrants’ rights. In the GCC’s contract system, their millions of immigrant workers are only temporary residents with no consistent legal protection and no path to citizenship. Compare with the system in the United States or in Europe, where legal immigrants enjoy multiple layers of legal protection, residency status, and a path to citizenship if certain benchmarks are met. The GCC kafala system is being used to exploit poor workers from developing countries to receive hard work on the cheap.