The woman, Baina Mokalam (27) came to work for a Egyptian family in the UAE as a maid three years ago. Baina said that whenever she asked for her salary, which was never paid, she would receive beatings by dustpans or brooms. She was never allowed to leave the house and was unable for all those years to contact her family back home. Baina recounted how her female employer gave her food “once a day, at around 3pm. Though I felt dizzy and my stomach hurt, I had to work.”

Recently, a neighbor of the family in Ras Al Khamiah heard Baina’s cries as her employer repeatedly banged her head against the wall. The neighbor also noticed that the maid’s face was swollen and alerted the police. Baina’s misery did not end there and she had to spend a night in jail before being brought to court. Her employer remained in jail and the case was referred to the Public Prosecution.

The Khaleej Times recently published a rather skewed article about housemaids committing crimes in the UAE titled “Increase in Crimes Involving Maids, Police Urge Caution”. The report discusses an apparent rise of 20% in “crimes” committed by housemaids in 2009 compared to 2008. The reason we use the word “crimes” in quotation marks in because the “crimes” by maids include not just theft, but also things like adultery and suicide attempts.

The article also includes stories of abuse of foreign domestic workers. One such worker, Terrok, said that maids often live in “prison like” conditions when they are not allowed to leave the house of their employers all week long. Magee, a Filipino maid, told the paper that she fled her employer after he sexually harassed her and now she works on a part-time basis. Berria, a Sri Lankan maid, said that some employers don’t pay as much as they promised or don’t provide proper health-care. She added that because labor laws in the UAE do no protect domestic workers, absconding their employers is often the only way out for abused maids.

The booklet gives some mention of the rights of workers, for example the right to religious freedom and to file complaints against anyone who abuses them. However, from this article it seems that the overwhelming focus of the document is on the responsibility of the worker to abide by the laws of the UAE and to refrain from making any trouble while they are in the country. For example, workers can ‘demand rights’ but they should not do this through sit-ins or demonstrations (workers are still forbidden to unionise in the UAE). Migrants must also take responsibility for making sure that they understand their contracts properly before they take up employment in the UAE, because ignorance of terms and conditions of employment will not be accepted by the state if they try to complain against unfair treatment. This seems somewhat harsh given that so many migrant workers have a low level of literacy and are all too often duped by corrupt recruiters or contractors into agreements that are unfair, and which they have no hope of understanding.

It is fair enough for a country to lay down rules for its guest workers to abide by, but by focusing on the responsibilities of migrant workers, is the UAE simply sidestepping its duty to protect the millions of low-paid workers from the developing world that its economy relies on?

We will try to get hold of the original document and see!

Puri told E.T:

“Dubai is very much in the news now and ‘Dubai Dreams’ is a timely reminder of the tough lives and shattered dreams of Indians who are paying a heavy price in the current credit crunch that has also touched this Middle Eastern emirate….There was a time when all the flights used to lead to Dubai from India as Indians paid any airfare to chase their dreams in Dubai. Today, ironically, they are heading back home, leaving their shattered dreams behind.”

We are very much looking forward to getting our hands on a copy of the book!

By 2020 Saadiyat Island intends to host six globally recognized academic and cultural institutions (including  NYU, the Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum and a Zaha Hadid designed performing arts center), 29 hotels, golf courses, private residences and a marina. As these international academic and cultural institutions come to represent hallmarks for cultural exchange in the region, minimum respect for the rights of workers should be a precursor to etablishing a presence in the UAE.

In May 2009 Migrant Rights reported the publication of HRW’s report ‘The Island of Happiness’ on Saadiyat Island, which showed how workers constructing the $25 billion island were subjected to violations such as  passport confiscation, coercive contractual circumstances and inadequate health and safety protection. 

Workers incur heavy debts at home in order to pay uncrupulous agents illegal recruitment fees in return for the promise of jobs with wages up to two times the salaries offered once the workers get to the UAE. The cycle of exploitation continues as the sponsorship system prevents workers from switching employer. This system, coupled with workers’ heavy debts amounts to a situation akin to foced labor. The prohibition of trade unions means workers have limited access to recourse.

NYU must be encouraged to uphold world-class standards in the construction and day-to-day operations of its new campus in Abu Dhabi. At present, construction has not yet begun on NYU’s main campus on Saadiyat Island so NYU has the opportunity to ensure that fair labor is a prioirty in contractual agreements with local partners in the UAE. Human Rights Watch and The Coalition for Fair Labor at NYU are urging the university’s administration to include specific contractual provisions that protect workers from abuse.

The HRW-NYU campaign includes a petition http://www.hrw.kintera.org/nyu  urging NYU President Jon Sexton to remember the plight of vulnerable workers in upcoming negotiations with Abu Dhabi authorities. Please sign this petition to show support for the HRW-NYU Saadiyat Island campaign.

The HRW report raises the issues of passport confiscation, abuses of domestic workers and bans on trade unions as key issues in the region. Bahrain and Kuwait have taken steps towards removing the kafala system, which ties the right of a migrant to remain in the country to the permission of his sponsor. However, a disturbing finding is that migrant domestic workers are excluded from the new legislation. This is particularly concerning to M-R.org given the spate of suicides and attempted suicides by distressed maids working in the region in recent months (see here and here)

Here are some extracts:

Bahrain

In May 2009 Minister of Labor Majeed al-Alawi announced a proposed revision to Bahrain’s kafala (sponsorship) system designed to reduce the risk ofexploitation and abuse of migrant workers. The former system tied migrants’ work visas and immigration status to their employers, enabling employer abuses and preventing workers from changing jobs or leaving the country. Under the amended law, which was adopted on August 1, the government officially sponsors each worker, allowing him or her to more easily change employers. At this writing it remains unclear whether the reform has been fully implemented. Bahrain’s business
community strongly opposed the changes, and workers still need the defacto sponsorship of an individual or company in order to remain in the country legally. Migrant workers complain that some employers illegally withhold passports and fail to pay wages.

The amended law excludes migrant domestic workers, who are at especially high risk of abuse due to their isolation in private homes. In 2009 prominent cases involved physical abuse, forced confinement, and the death of domestic workers.

Kuwait

Parliament in May 2009 debated a draft revision of the Labor Law that would incorporate more protective provisions on wages, working hours, and safety. However, it does not establish monitoring mechanisms for workers’ rights, and continues to exclude domestic workers from its protections. Approximately 700,000 migrant women—chiefly from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines—are employed in Kuwait as full-time live-in domestic workers. Their exclusion under the current labor law deprives them of protections afforded other workers, such as a weekly rest day and limits on working hours. Many domestic workers complain of confinement in the house, long working hours without rest, months or years of unpaid wages, and sometimes verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Domestic workers who fled abusive situations at their workplace have often become stranded at their embassies, at deportation centers, or
at recruitment agencies. In October 2009 Indonesia banned further migration of domestic workers to Kuwait in response to having 600 workers trapped in its embassy. A major barrier to the redress of labor abuses is the sponsorship (kafala) system by which a migrant worker’s legal residence in Kuwait is tied to his or her employer, who serves as a “sponsor.” Migrant workers can only transfer employmentwith their sponsor’s consent, although a reform in August 2009 frees them of this requirement if they have worked more than three years (migrant domestic workers do not benefit from this provision). Sponsorship traps workers in abusive situations,
including in situations of forced labor, and blocks their access to means of redress. If an employer withdraws sponsorship, workers who flee abusive workplaces can be arrested and deported for being out of status in the country. Kuwaiti law enforcement officials rarely bring to justice Kuwaitis who abuse their powers as sponsors.

Saudi Arabia

An estimated eight million largely Asian and Arab foreign workers fill manual, clerical, and service jobs. Many suffer multiple abuses and labor exploitation, sometimes rising to slavery-like conditions. A new anti-trafficking law passed in July set prison sentences of up to 15 years for forced labor. However, Saudi Arabia made little progress reforming the restrictive kafala (sponsorship) system that
ties migrant workers’ residency permits to their employers, fueling abuses such as employers confiscating passports, withholding wages, and forcing migrants to work against their will.

In July 2009 the advisory Shura Council extended some labor protections to the 1.5 million migrant domestic workers, but excluded the right of workers to leave the house or keep their passports, and obliges them to obey the employers. Asian embassies report thousands of complaints each year from domestic workers forced to work 15-20 hours a day, seven days a week, and denied their
salaries. Domestic workers frequently endure forced confinement, food deprivation, and severe psychological, physical, and sexual abuse.

Migrants sometimes face severe delays in the immigration and justice systems, and obstacles such as lack of access to interpreters, legal aid, or their consulates. Few migrants successfully pursue criminal cases against abusive employers. Following a dispute with his sponsor, officials on October 26 detained pending deportation Usama Hijazi, an Egyptian legal adviser living in Saudi Arabia for 16
years. Hijazi had just won a court ruling in his favor against his sponsor, granting him 155,000 riyal (US$41,000) and allowing him to transfer his sponsorship. Authorities repatriated Keni binti Carda, an Indonesian domestic worker, in late 2008 before she could formally complain about her employers causing her severe burns and prying out her teeth. She returned to Riyadh to press charges, but as of
November 2009 criminal proceedings had yet to begin. In August Saudi morality police raided a shelter run by a Filipino support group, though prosecutors later dropped charges against 18 persons present.

UAE

Many female domestic workers are subjected to unpaid wages, food deprivation, forced confinement, and physical or sexual abuse. In August 2009 the Philippines government paid to fly home 44 Filipinas who had been living for months at a shelter. The women were among 127 Filipinas, mostly housemaids, who fled their workplace after complaining of mistreatment, long working hours, insufficient
food, and nonpayment of salaries. The standard contract for domestic workers introduced in April 2007 provides some protections and calls for “adequate breaks,” but does not limit working hours or provide for a weekly rest day, overtime pay, or workers’ compensation.
Exploitation of migrant workers by construction companies across the country is also severe: abuses include maintaining unsafe working environments that contribute to avoidable illness or deaths, and withholding workers’ travel documents. On August 31, 2009, police and labor officials quickly dispersed a demonstration over low wages by as many as 2,000 striking migrant workers employed by construction
and engineering company Al Habtoor in Dubai. A Ministry of Labor investigation into the strike cleared the company of any wrongdoing after determining it had not broken any rules regarding pay.

The report also mentions the case of UAE royal family member Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan who is still yet to be charged for torturing an Afghan migrant. Disturbing video footage of Al Nahyan whipping, beating and finally running over the man with his car in the desert was leaked in 2009.

Pravin (not his real name) is an Indian mechanical engineer who had worked in Dubai until July 2009 when he was fired. Upon starting his employment with the company, Al Mufaddal Engineering & Marine Services Co. LLC, he handed over his passport, original degree certificate and B.E. degree to his employer. To be able to return to India, Pravin needed his passport, which was confiscated by the employer in a violation of UAE law. Pravin, desperate to return to his family back home but without his passport, was forced to sign a document that claims that he owes the company money by his employer, Huzzaifa Tambawala, so he get his passport back. The employer never returned the other certificates to Pravin.

Pravin then returned to India and is now seeking employment in Saudi Arabia, but his potential employer is demanding that he produce his original B.E. certificate, which is held by the former employer who’s refusing to give the certificate back. He claims that Pravin owes him money, showing the document he forced Pravin to sign before handing over his passport.

Currently, Pravin is unemployed, his family is in a desperate situation and he has a small child to support. He has previously contacted Indian embassy in Dubai but has not received a response. We approached the Indian embassy in Dubai and asked them to immediately intervene in this matter. We are yet to hear back from them.

The workers continuously protested against the poor working conditions and low pay, despite the fact that strikes and unionizing are illegal according to UAE law. In 2004, thousands of workers protested before the Ministry of Labour, only to be dispersed by police and threatened with mass deportations. Sporadic protests continued in 2005, with the largest labor protest in the history of the UAE in September 2005, when 7,000 workers staged a three-hour protest. In March 2006, 2,500 workers rioted at the Burj Khalifa site, demanding a raise in their pay. In response to this, protesters were once again threatened with mass deportation. In November 2007, workers at the Burj Khalifa site held a strike again, demanding better living conditions and pay.

Those workers are willing to break the law to protest against their conditions because they are, simply put, abysmal. Arabtec, which built the Burj Khalifa/Dubai houses its workers in filthy labor camps. One dweller of the Arabtec labor camp described it this way: “The latrines are so filthy we cannot use them, we are so disgusted. The roads are full of garbage and waterlogged. Living and moving about here is a great problem. We suffer greatly”. A BBC investigation came to similar conclusion about the overcrowded labor camps that overflowed with sewage.

A Human Rights Watch report from November 2006 about construction workers in the UAE found that “on average a migrant construction worker earns $175 a month (the average per capita income in the UAE is $2,106 a month).” The report found several abuses that construction workers suffer in the UAE, including “unpaid or extremely low wages, several years of indebtedness to recruitment agencies for fees that UAE law says only employers should pay, the withholding of employees’ passports, and hazardous working conditions that result in apparently high rates of death and injury.”

1. Death of Domestic Migrant Workers in Lebanon
This story is significant not just because of the sheer number of deaths and their alarming frequency, but also because it drew the attention of human rights organizations, international media outlets and governments to the abuse domestic workers suffer in Lebanon. Following the string of suicides in October 2009, Nepal banned its women from working in Lebanon and a court in Lebanon sentenced an employer to a short prison sentence and a fine for abusing her maid. Domestic workers in Lebanon are still not protected under Lebanon’s Labor Law and the Sponsorship system makes them almost completely dependent on their employer.

2. Changes in Bahrain’s Sponsorship System
While we judge that the proclamations about the “abolishing” or “axing” of the Sponsorship System were premature in Bahrain, the changes instituted in September of this year are a significant step forward. Expatriate workers who were previously chained to one sponsor and depended on him to stay in the country, can now switch sponsors, even if their sponsor objects. This in theory ensures that abused workers, or those who are not properly compensated, can switch to a better sponsor instead of losing their residency. Unfortunately, the new law does not apply to the most vulnerable of migrants – domestic workers.

3. The Dark Side of the UAE’s Construction Boom
Like our number one pick, this is also a heavily-covered phenomenon, that has been reported in the press and by human rights organization. The financial crisis has resulted in many migrant workers, especially construction workers, losing their jobs in the UAE. Those workers are often in debt to the agents who provided them with a working visa, and are forced to stay in the UAE and work illegally, trying to cover those debts.
Others who have managed to retain their jobs are living in squalid conditions, and their passports are usually confiscated, in violation of UAE law.

4. UN Report Shows that Migration is Good for Receiving and Sending Countries
The 2009 UNDP report (United Nations Development Program) focused on migration. The report provided fresh statistics about migration practices, remittances, human development, economic growth and more. It showed that migrants from the poorest countries, on average, experienced a 15-fold increase in income, which allowed them to double school enrollment rates and a create a 16-fold reduction in child mortality back home. The report dispelled misconceptions like the harm in a “brain drain” in developing countries, or that most of the migration is to developed countries. The most important conclusion, we think, is that the report unequivocally showed that migrant labor is good for the sending country, but also for the receiving country. The myth of migrant workers coming to “steal” jobs from the locals has been debunked.

5. Wave of Suicide and Suicide Attempts by Maids in Kuwait
This story clearly shows the difference independent media has on covering abuses of migrant rights. While the wave of suicides by maids in Lebanon triggered local and global coverage, government proclamations and reports from Human Rights Watch, the unstoppable trend of suicides by migrant workers in Kuwait has resulted in meager coverage. Other than local papers, which devote short paragraphs to stories of suicides by workers, no one has taken on this cause. During November alone, we documented 13 cases of suicide or suicide attempts in Kuwait. Since that month, suicides have continued. Not a week goes by without a reports about a maid who sets herself on fire, hangs herself, drinks detergent, or workers who mysteriously fall from roofs and balconies.