Reports on Asian maids getting raped and attempting suicide continue to appear on Kuwaiti newspapers. On the 7th of April, Al-Qabas Arabic daily newspaper has reported an incident of a Philippine maid that ran away from the house she works in. Her sponsor, the Kafeel, has reported her absence to the…
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Kuwait: Two Maids Fail to Commit Suicide as another Gets Raped
April 15th, 2011
Nepali Slaves in the Gulf: Short Film by Anti Slavery
April 13th, 2011
Anti-Slavery has just released this short film on Nepali labourers in the UAE, as part of a campaign against bonded labour in the Gulf States. We commend Anti Slavery and ITUC (the video’s funding partner) for making such a clear and hard-hitting film about this much under-reported issue. E...
Nepal’s Challenge: Documenting Missing Migrants in the Middle East
March 31st, 2011
The Nepali government has had some difficult lessons to learn from the crises in Libya and Japan. A lack of reliable data proved a major stumbling block in its attempts help stranded citizens in recent weeks, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has admitted that consular staff wasted a lot of time &...
Burj al Khalifa: the human story behind the world’s tallest building
March 29th, 2011
Crowds gathered around the Burj al Khalifa tower earlier today to watch French ‘spiderman’ Alain Robert scale the world’s tallest building. The free-climber, notorious for climbing Petronas Towers and the Empire State building with no ropes, wore a harness on this occasion to compl...
Excerpt on Foreign Domestic Workers, from an NGO submission to OHCHR on Economic and Social Rights in Syria
March 18th, 2011
The following is the excerpt on migrant domestic workers from the submission to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for Syria’s session of the Universal Periodic Review at the Human Rights Council. The submission is on Economic and Social Rights in Syria, and is by the Arab NG...
One Sri Lankan, one Bengali, found dead in Lebanon
March 18th, 2011
Death Housemaids Lebanon Recruitment Agencies Suicide
Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported today that the body of Sri Lankan domestic worker, Manaka Brinjani, was found in Baabdat two days ago. The death was caused by the fall from from a high rise building. The security bulletin said that she was attempting to escape from the employment office when s...
Abu Dhabi Guggenheim Faces Protest
March 17th, 2011
Nicolai Ouroussoff writes in The New York Times: A group of more than 130 artists, including many prominent figures in the Middle Eastern art world, says it will boycott the $800 million Guggenheim museum being built in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, unless conditions for the fo...
Nepali Migrants Trapped in Tripoli
March 15th, 2011
An article by Nepali journalist Deepak Adhikari on Nepali migrant workers stranded in Libya, re-posted with permission. Adhikari writes for The Kathmandu Post, and has written frequently about labour migration issue. You can see read his personal blog here. Trapped in Tripoli On a warm afternoon on ...
Group reiterates call for immediate repatriation of 1,000+ stranded OFWs and kids in Saudi
March 9th, 2011
Amid protests in Saudi Arabia called by the minority local political dissenters demanding the release of 15 detained Shiite leaders and reforms in their government, an alliance of Filipino migrants’ group Tuesday strongly re-iterates its call to the Aquino government to immediately repatriate the ...
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