Inter-regional conference to discuss the situation of migrant workers in Asia and Arab regions.
Bahrain center for human Rights
Introductions:
Before we begin to look at the specifics of female domestic workers living under the Kafala system in GCC states and the region, I would like to outline certain characteristics which existed in a kind of "work" or system which existed in the past.
In this work, people were treated as an considered the property of their employers or owners. In this work, people we powerless, they were alienated from the people they worked with and the people they worked for. In this work, they only had freedom of mobility according
to the will or commands of their employers.
Now here I have been describing the characteristics of the slavery system, which was officially abolished 200 years ago. Unfortunately, many of these characteristics and conditions can be found in the situation in which female domestic workers live in under the Kafala system. This is what I hope to highlight in my presentation.
1 - What is the 'kafala' sponsorship system?
Basically, the sponsorship system means that expatriate workers can only enter, work, and leave certain countries with the assistance or explicit permission of their sponsor or employer, who is a local in the country. This is basis upon which visas are issued.
What is this system for female migrant domestic workers, who as we learned yesterday make up a significant and a significantly vulnerable percentage of migrant workers in this region.
According to the ILO, domestic work is the "single most important category of employment among women migrants to the Gulf as well as to Lebanon and Jordan".
The Kafala system was drawn from a concept of "guardianship" by which domestic workers are given a place in their employers abode, and under this system labour laws in GCC countries as well as Lebanon and Jordan do not cover domestic workers - although we heard about some
provisions in Lebanon and Kuwait yesterday which perhaps are not being implemented.
Because of the domain in which they work - households – domestic workers also do not fall under any other national laws, and are essentially not legally classified as workers. Because their work is basically legally unrecognised and they are unrecognised as workers, they are explicitly unable to exercise the rights and freedoms afforded to workers.
Also because of their 'unrecognised' status, and even their unrecognised work, it is difficult to scrutinise and regulate their working and living conditions.
2 - Where and how are the human rights violations produced??
i) In the process of employment There are extreme irregularities in the use of the recruitment system. Many women are exploited or trafficked on false premises by recruiting agents, either in their home country or the country which receives them. Many of them, even before they start working they become hugely indebted to recruiters.
ii) In the contract of employment The conditions are set according to the employer's discretion and in many (possibly the majority) of cases, often there is not contract at all. If we take Bahrain as an example, the Ministry of Labour has created a model contract - but how much it is used, and how useful it is, it is not clear. In addition, employers are required to pay for the flight costs of their employees - but from cases we have received and seen, in many many cases employers do not do this.
iii) In work
Unspecified and often multiple forms of work: women are often babysitters, kitchen helpers, cleaners, they work inside the family home and in their relatives homes too.
As an example, in Bahrain the number of women who escape exhaustive conditions and end up in NGO or embassy shelters increases massively because they wake up to help their employer make suhoor (pre dawn meal) then the day begins with the children going to school in the morning, in the afternoon they prepare the futoor with their employer, and they stay up at night till the family goes to sleep – this includes all other duties of caring for the house and children – and the next day it begins again.
They work for undefined hours, they are not able to practice their own religion freely, they are not given days off, there are cases of non-payment of salaries.
They have controlled and limited freedom of movement - they are not free to move outside the sponsor's home and they are not free to receive visitors or have partners. Their passports are withheld. They have problems with living conditions, being fed, medical provisions - and these are the day to day sufferings that we do not hear about.
And then comes the psychological, verbal, physical and sexual abuse which we have received cases of in Bahrain and seen minimal coverage of in the regional media. And in these cases the abusers have been the employers or sponsors but also their children or relatives.
iv) Access
Compounding these problems, female migrant domestic workers have extremely tenuous or no access at all to care, support services and legal redress.
According to a 2005 ILO study, I looked at the situation for female migrant domestic workers in Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE:
In Bahrain the average number of hours worked per week was 108, in Kuwait 101, in the UAE 105. These women had an average of 1 day off per month. They all spoke of control on their freedom of movement.
Every single one interviewed reported that their passport was held by their employer. None of them were given renumeration for working overtime. In each country, more than 40% of the women interviewed reported physical, verbal or sexual abuse.
3 - Impact
The result of these violations creates what are described as "illegal" "runaway" or "free visa" workers. These are people who often escape such conditions and continue to work outside the extremely limiting framework of the Kafala system. Many of them are then arrested as "illegal" workers, detained, and then deported.
In other cases, these women have turned to the authorities which are supposed to help them. We have seen this many times, where an abused woman manages to reach a police station to file a report. She may even have been raped, this has happened in our experience.
And many times we have seen that she is returned to her abuser. If not, if she decides to go ahead with a court case (which will carry on for an undetermined length of time, may cost a lot of monay, and may not be successful), her alternative option is to stay in jail.
Because the kafala systems says that if she is to be allowed to stay in that country, then she has to be living with her sponsor or employer - and if she is not, she is violating the law, even if he is
her abuser or in some cases her rapist. So the system treats the victims as criminals.
These violations then create the kind of issues that local authorities and governments complain about - large numbers of "illegal" free visa workers, and women working in prostitution.
Conclusion is that not only does this system generate violations of human rights for those living under it, but by creating these inhumane conditions it contributes to the issues which the governments of the region claim to be working against