Article in Arabian Business: US urges GCC states to scrap sponsorship system

Gulf countries must scrap their sponsorship system for migrant workers that leaves labourers and domestic workers exposed to human trafficking and forced labour, the US State Department reported on Monday.

In a 373-page report, the department said that employers in the Gulf states exploit the widely used ‘kafala’ system to abuse workers and named Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as the region’s worst offenders.

Both were described by the department as a “destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labour.”

The two countries were ranked in Tier 3, the lowest possible category; potentially leaving the pair open to US sanctions of non-humanitarian aid.

“These countries consistently fall at the bottom of the list when compared to others around the world,” said Nisha Varia of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“It is disappointing that governments across the Middle East have been slow to change the kafala system when it is so easily abused.”

Qatar and Lebanon were both placed on the Tier 2 watchlist, the report’s second lowest ranking. The UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Egypt were each assigned a Tier 2 rating, indicating they have made significant efforts to tackle human trafficking.

Millions of migrants, primarily from Asia and Africa, have short-term employment contracts for blue-collar jobs in the construction, domestic work, and service industries across the Middle East.

Under the ‘kafala’ system, nationals and companies can hire migrant workers who are dependent on their employers for food and shelter.

Many workers complain that agencies or employers confiscate their passports, do not pay them regularly or deduct housing or health costs from their pay.

A number of Arab states, including the UAE and Jordan, have signed up to anti-trafficking legislation. Saudi Arabia has operated a shelter for female domestic workers since 1997, while Kuwait has maintained a shelter facility since 2007.

However, other countries, including Lebanon and Kuwait, have yet to adopt anti-trafficking legislation, Many Arab countries retain immigration laws that critics claim penalise rather than protect migrant workers.

“For efforts to end forced labour and human trafficking to be successful, governments in the Middle East should reform the current visa sponsorship system,” said Varia.

“When employers have near-total control over migrants’ ability to change jobs, and sometimes to leave the country, workers can get trapped in exploitative situations in which they are forced to work without wages, get beaten, or face other abuses.”

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Article in Al Masry al Youm: As Gulf economies decline, Egyptian migrants suffer

Ahmad Shokr

Sayyed Mohamed returned to his village in Assiut three months ago in search of a new beginning. After spending most of his adult life in Kuwait, the 46-year-old driver was dismissed from Hashim al-Shakhs company, a leading Kuwaiti importer and distributor of paper products, where he worked for several years. Forced to cut jobs due to a budget squeeze, the company informed Mohamed that they were no longer interested in retaining their older employees.

His story is shared by many other Egyptians who have recently been displaced from their jobs in Gulf states. Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, many expatriate workers have suddenly been forced to return to Egypt, leaving behind the livelihoods that sustained them for decades.

Egyptians working abroad constitute an important sector of Egypt’s labor economy and the money they send home each year provides essential support for their families back home.

Egypt has long been a regional labor exporter, especially to the Gulf states, Jordan and Libya. Since the government lifted restrictions on migration in the mid-1970s, Egyptians began leaving in large numbers to find work abroad.

As a result of the oil boom, the Gulf began attracting many workers from neighboring Arab countries. While emigration patterns since then have fluctuated--due to changing oil prices, political developments, and a turn toward South Asian migrant labor--many Egyptians have nonetheless continued traveling to the Gulf in search of economic prosperity. Dubai's construction boom in the mid-2000s strengthened this pattern, absorbing migrant workers from around the region.

Remittances secure the livelihoods of many Egyptians and represent a significant portion of Egypt's national income. In 2008, the World Bank reported that Egypt was among the top ten remittance recipients in the world. But in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Egypt witnessed a significant drop in cash transfers from abroad, from which it has not yet recovered.

The Central Bank of Egypt estimates that remittances in the second quarter of 2009-2010 reached only US$1.7 billion, a low point since the start of the crisis. The actual size of the drop, however, is difficult to represent in official figures, as many migrants transfer money through informal channels rather than banks and licensed money exchanges.

Since late 2008, job cuts in the Gulf states have been on the rise, affecting both professionals and unskilled migrant workers. With the termination of their contracts, many workers who were only hired on a temporary basis have been forced to return to their countries of origin. Worker repatriation has thus served as a mechanism for Gulf states to offload the social distress caused by the financial crisis on to neighboring Arab and South Asian countries, including Egypt, while absolving themselves of any responsibility to provide for the well-being of their migrant workers.

"I worked for a small company where I made roughly LE3000 per month; overall life was good," says Mohamed.

Like most other expatriate workers in the Gulf, Mohamed was hired as a temporary worker, renewing his contract and visa every two years. His monthly salary was enough to support his wife and five children in Egypt. But since his return, making ends meet has been a challenge. He now works as a self-employed driver, transporting passengers from his village to a local town.

"Since returning to Egypt, I've only seen bitterness. I can barely make enough money to provide for my family."

According to renowned Egyptian economist Ahmed Sayyed el-Naggar, it is difficult to assess the impact of the recent crisis on Egyptian expatriate workers and, in turn, on the Egyptian economy. “Since the beginning of the crisis, the repatriation of Egyptians from the Gulf has not been represented in any official statistics, neither from the Egyptian Ministry of Manpower nor from the Gulf states.”

El-Naggar estimates that up to 300,000 Egyptians may have returned from the Gulf, especially those working in construction, real estate, trade, and services. He predicts that the most immediate effect of worker repatriation will be a rise in the Egyptian unemployment rate, which currently sits at around ten percent, according to official statistics.

“Egypt already has a high unemployment rate, and with the return of these workers it is expected to increase,” he says.

Meanwhile, el-Naggar says, the Egyptian government's response has been grossly inadequate: "The government implemented contractionary fiscal policies last year in order to reduce spending, a strategy which will not create more job opportunities."

It is still uncertain when remittance levels will rebound and what opportunities foreign labor markets may hold for Egyptian migrant workers in the near future. But those who have returned to Egypt add another layer to the growing social pressures that have been fueling public demands for government intervention to improve income levels and living standards for working people--demands which were made manifestly clear in this week's demonstrations for a national minimum wage.

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Human Rights Watch website publishes report on migrant workers

Middle East/Asia: Partial Reforms Fail Migrant Domestic Workers

On International Labor Day, Governments Should Pledge to Make Comprehensive Reforms

April 28, 2010

(New York) - The reforms undertaken by Middle Eastern and Asian governments fall far short of the minimum protections needed to tackle abuses against migrant domestic workers, Human Rights Watch said today in a report released in advance of May 1, International Labor Day. Despite recent improvements, millions of Asian and African women workers remain at high risk of exploitation and violence, with little hope of redress, Human Rights Watch said.

The 26-page report, "Slow Reform: Protection of Migrant Domestic Workers in Asia and the Middle East," reviews conditions in eight countries with large numbers of migrant domestic workers: Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Singapore, and Malaysia. The report surveys progress in extending protection to domestic workers under labor laws, reforming immigration "sponsorship" systems that contribute to abuse, ensuring effective response by police and courts to physical and sexual violence, and allowing civil society and trade unions to organize.

"Several governments have made concrete improvements for migrant domestic workers in the past five years, but in general, reforms have been slow, incremental, and hard-fought," said Nisha Varia, women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Jordan deserves credit for including domestic work in their labor law, but enforcement remains a big concern. Singapore has prosecuted physical abuse against domestic workers vigorously, but fails to guarantee them even one day off a week."

Several countries across the Middle East and Asia host significant numbers of migrant domestic workers, ranging from 196,000 in Singapore and 200,000 in Lebanon to approximately 660,000 in Kuwait and 1.5 million in Saudi Arabia. Migrant domestic work is an important source of employment for women from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal, India, and Ethiopia. Migrant domestic workers' earnings constitute a significant proportion of the billions of dollars of remittances sent to these countries each year.

Human Rights Watch research over the past five years has shown that migrant domestic workers risk a range of abuses. Common complaints include unpaid wages, excessive working hours with no time for rest, and heavy debt burdens from exorbitant recruitment fees. Isolation in private homes and forced confinement in the workplace contribute to psychological, physical, and sexual violence, forced labor, and trafficking.

"Reforms often encounter stiff resistance both from employers used to having a domestic worker on call around the clock and labor brokers profiting handsomely off a poorly regulated system," Varia said. "Governments should make protecting these vulnerable workers a priority."

Most governments exclude domestic workers from their main labor laws, denying them protections guaranteed to other workers, such as limits to hours of work or a weekly day of rest. Only Jordan has amended its labor law to include domestic workers, guaranteeing protections such as monthly payment of salaries into a bank account, a weekly day off, paid annual and sick leave, and a maximum 10-hour workday. However, domestic workers cannot leave the workplace without permission from their employer.

The governments of Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia have all publicly announced they will amend existing labor laws or draft new legislation on domestic work. But despite years of proposals, none have adopted such reforms. Saudi Arabia's Shura Council approved an annex on domestic work to the labor law, but the cabinet has not yet approved it. Singapore's Ministry of Manpower has repeatedly rejected calls to extend labor law protections to domestic workers.

"Instead of ensuring protection under labor laws, governments have relied on creating standard employment contracts or bilateral agreements with labor-sending countries, Varia said. "Employment contracts and bilateral agreements may be better than nothing, but with weaker protections than labor laws, they effectively reinforce discrimination against domestic workers."

Immigration reforms have proceeded even more slowly than labor reforms, Human Rights Watch said. In the countries surveyed, domestic workers migrate on fixed-term visas, under which their employers double as their immigration sponsors. This system heightens the risk of abuse by giving inordinate control to employers, who can have domestic workers sent home at will or prohibit them from being hired by a new employer.

"Governments have dragged their feet on reforms to the immigration sponsorship system, which contributes to forced labor and trafficking," Varia said. "They need to move quickly to find alternatives, such as shifting sponsorship from employers to labor authorities or closely monitored employment agencies."

Human Rights Watch also examined the governments' responses to criminal abuses against domestic workers. Some governments have begun to investigate and successfully prosecute abuse against domestic workers, but numerous obstacles continue to stand in the way of such victories, Human Rights Watch found. For example, systems for filing complaints are often out of reach of domestic workers trapped in private homes and unable to speak the local language.

For cases that do reach the attention of the authorities, legal proceedings often stretch over years, while victims typically wait in overcrowded shelters, unable to work. The lengthy waits and uncertain outcomes cause many domestic workers to withdraw their complaints or negotiate financial settlements so they can return home quickly. In other cases, domestic workers who bring charges are forced to defend themselves against counter-allegations of theft, witchcraft, and adultery.

"Successful prosecutions of abusive employers and labor brokers is not only justice served but also a strong deterrent against abuse," Varia said. Governments should establish accessible ways to file complaints, expedite legal proceedings, and ensure a minimum standard of social services, such as shelter and health care, during the process."

Reforms on regulating domestic work are taking place not only at the national level, but globally. In recognition of the importance of protecting a major source of employment that has been historically neglected, members of the International Labor Organization will begin formal discussions in June to establish global labor standards for domestic work. Lebanon, Bahrain, and Jordan support legally binding standards, while Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates support a nonbinding recommendation. Singapore and Kuwait did not submit official responses.

Human Rights Watch urged governments to take the following steps to prevent and respond to abuses against migrant domestic workers:

• Extend equal labor protections in national law to domestic workers, and address unique circumstances relating to their intermittent working hours, lodging, and board;
• Improve regulation and oversight of employment agencies and fees charged to these workers by private recruitment agencies;
• Reform immigration policies so that workers' visas are not tied to individual sponsors, and so that they can change employers without the first employer's consent;
• Improve workers' access to the criminal justice system, including through confidential complaint mechanisms, prosecutions, and expansion of victim services;
• Cooperate with labor-sending countries to monitor transnational recruitment, respond to complaints of abuse, and facilitate repatriation;
• Support a binding convention on domestic work with an accompanying recommendation during the International Labour Conference in June.

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Al Watan writes: حبس متهمة ضربت خادمتها حتى الموت سبع سنوات

كتبت ابتسام سعيد:

برأت محكمة الاستئناف مواطنة متهمة بقتل خادمتها بعصا وتركها في حوض الحمام عشر ساعات دون علاج من تهمة القتل العمد، وحكمت عليها بالسجن سبع سنوات عن تهمة ضرب أفضى الى موت.

وكانت محكمة الجنايات حكمت بحبس المتهمة 15 سنة مع الشغل بعد اتهامها بقتل الخادمة عمدا بأن انهالت عليها ضرباً بـ «عصا حديدية وأخرى خشبية» ودفعها حتى ارتطمت رأسها بحوض الحمام وتركتها عاجزة عن الحركة قرابة عشر ساعات دون أن تتداركها بالعلاج حتى توفيت.
وحضر أمام المحكمة دفاع المتهمة المحامي يعقوب عبد المحسن الصانع وترافع مؤسسا استئنافه على 10 أسباب: وهي الخطأ في تطبيق القانون وتوجيه التهمة الى زوج المتهمة طبقاً لنص المادة 134 من قانون الاجراءات والمحاكمات الجزائية وضرب الزوج للخادمة وسبب ارتكابه للجريمة ووجود زوج المتهمة بالمسكن خلال الفترة من الساعة 12 ظهراً حتى 7.30 مساء وعدم تحديد وقت الوفاة والمطالبة بتعديل وصف التهمة من قتل عمد الى قتل خطأ، وذلك لما أثبته تقرير الطب أن الوفاة حدثت نتيجة اصابات رضية شديدة متكررة نتج عنها تأثر الأجهزة الحيوية بالجسم مما أدى الى هبوط حاد بالقلب والتنفس وصدمة، وقد جاء تكييف النيابة العامة للواقعة على أنها قتل عمد تكييفاً غير صحيح لا يتناسب مع وقائع الدعوى وأسباب وفاة الخادمة خصوصا وأن جريمة القتل من الجرائم العمدية التي يتطلب لقيامها القصد الجنائي العام. منوها الى انتفاء القصد الجنائي جريمة القتل العمد تتميز عن غيرها من جرائم الاعتداء على النفس بعنصر خاص هو أن يقصد الجاني من ارتكاب الفعل الجنائي ازهاق روح المجني عليه ، وهذا العنصر ذو طابع خاص يختلف عن القصد الجنائي العام الذي يتطلبه القانون في سائر الجرائم، وهو بطبيعته أمر يبطنه الجاني ويضمره في نفسه، وقال: الثابت من أوراق القضية أن المجني عليها كانت تعمل خادمة لدى المتهمة وزوجها ولهما حق تأديبها ومن ثم جاءت اصاباتها بطريقة غير عمدية اذ ثابت من الأوراق أن المجني عليها كانت تستحم وتترك باب الحمام مفتوحاً وكان ذلك يثير غضب المتهمة وزوجها.

وقال: ندفع بانتفاء القصد الجنائي وعدم توافر قصد القتل، ومسؤولية رعاية المجني عليها تقع على عاتق الزوج وليس المتهمة.
وعلق قائلا: ان الاتهامات التي وجهتها النيابة العامة للمتهمة تصل عقوبتها للاعدام وأننا طالبنا في دفاعنا بعدة دفوع أدت الى تخفيف الحكم الصادر بحق موكلتنا.

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