(M-R.org and Mideast Youth Readers may be interested to know that this is the first year that the US itself has been assessed for the report. Its scores were high but by no means perfect).

Forced labour, restrictions on movement, physical and sexual abuse and exploitation by recruitment brokers have emerged as region-wide trends. Women who migrate to the Gulf States to work as domestic workers are at particular risk of being trafficked.

Here are some extracts from the report on some of the countries that M-R.org follows:

Bahrain

Bahrain is a destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and prostitution. Men and women from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Ethiopia and Eritrea migrate voluntarily to Bahrain to work as domestic workers or unskilled laborers in the construction and service industries. Some, however, face conditions of forced labor after arriving in Bahrain, through use of such practices as unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, contract substitution, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical and sexual abuse.

Israel
“Israel is a destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. Low-skilled workers from Thailand, China, Nepal, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, and, to a lesser extent, Romania and Turkey, migrate voluntarily and legally to Israel for contract labor in construction, agriculture, and home health care provision. Some, however, subsequently face conditions of forced labor, including through such practices as the unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, inability to change or otherwise choose one’s employer, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical intimidation. Many labor recruitment agencies in source countries and in Israel require workers to pay recruitment fees typically ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, although Chinese workers often paid more than $20,000 – a practice making workers highly vulnerable to trafficking or debt bondage once in Israel. Traffickers are usually the migrant workers’ legal employers and the recruitment agents in both Israel and in the migrants’ home countries. Women from the former Soviet Union and China are subjected to forced prostitution in Israel, although the number of women affected has declined since the passage and implementation of Israel’s 2006 anti-trafficking bill. A small number of Israeli women are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation.”

Kuwait

“Kuwait is a destination country for men and women, some of whom are subsequently subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor. The majority of trafficking victims are from among the approximately 550,000 foreign women recruited for domestic service work in Kuwait. Men and women migrate from India, Egypt, Bangladesh, Syria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, Iran, Jordan, and Iraq to work in Kuwait, most of them in the domestic service, construction, and sanitation industries. Although these migrants enter Kuwait voluntarily, upon arrival some are subjected to conditions of forced labor by their sponsors and labor agents, including through such practices as non-payment of wages, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and restrictions on movement, such as the withholding of passports. Labor recruitment agencies and their subagents at the community level in South Asia may coerce or defraud workers into accepting work in Kuwait that turns out to be exploitative and, in some instances, constitutes involuntary servitude.
In some cases, arriving migrant workers have found the terms of employment in Kuwait are wholly different from those they agreed to in their home countries, making them vulnerable to human trafficking. As a result of such contract fraud, the Government of Indonesia in October 2009 banned further migration of domestic workers to Kuwait. Some 600 Indonesian domestic workers sought refuge in the Indonesian embassy in Kuwait in the last year; some of these domestic workers may have been victims of trafficking. Some of these workers arrive in the country to find their promised jobs do not exist. Many of the migrant workers arriving for work in Kuwait have paid exorbitant fees to recruiters in their home countries – a practice making workers highly vulnerable to forced labor once in Kuwait. Some unscrupulous Kuwaiti sponsors and recruiting agents prey on some of these migrants by charging them high amounts for residency visas, which foreign workers are supposed to receive for free. Adult female migrant workers are particularly vulnerable and consequently are often victims of nonconsensual commercial sexual exploitation and forced prostitution. Some domestic workers have fled from employers, and subsequently have been coerced into prostitution.”

The woman is suspected of smuggling into the country the two women to nurse her father a few months ago. The women were forced to work around the clock caring for the older man and perform other house work. The employer had confiscated the women’s passports and did not pay them enough. The woman kept the caregivers under lock and key and even placed cameras all over the house to ensure that the imprisoned women wouldn’t leave.

One of the migrant woman managed to procure a cellphone and call the police. The Israel woman was brought before a judge who extended her detention for four days. She is suspected of unlawful imprisonment, holding persons in slavery-like condition and trafficking humans for forced labor.

Nepali women who have agreed to work in Kuwait are reportedly being sent to Saudi Arabia, where they often find themselves stranded without work or papers.

Kuwaiti employment brokers are reported to be sending women illegally to Saudi Arabia, often making use of family networks, to meet the demand in the Saudi market for cheap domestic labour.

Gaps in labour laws and restrictive employment practices are putting migrant workers in Saudi Arabia at risk, according to HRW.

Full story here.

The extensive 26-page report surveyed the conditions of domestic workers in Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain (as well as Malaysia and Singapore). The report remarked that the conditions of migrant domestic workers are gradually, albeit slowly, improving. However, domestic workers are still extremely vulnerable and under-protected in the Middle East.

The report details how migrant domestic workers can be subjected to exploitation by several actors, starting from recruitment agencies in their own countries and up to policemen in their country of destination if the approach to report abuse. As the report states “the failure to properly regulate paid domestic work facilitates egregious abuse and exploitation, and means domestic workers who encounter such abuse have few or no means for seeking redress.”

The vulnerability begins at home, where recruitment agencies often provide false information to migrant workers about their future conditions and pay. Those agencies usually demand a high fee for securing the work visa, forcing the future workers to go into debt. The burden of debt to the agency makes the domestic worker fearful about reporting abuse and possibly losing their job and being unable to repay the “loan” to the agency. Once a worker arrives to his county of destination, recruitment agencies sometimes substitute the contracts the woman signed back home with a new contract with poorer conditions. We have covered a case of such worker, Grace from the Philippines. She was promised a job in Qatar as an executive secretary for 700 QAR per month, but upon arrival she was informed that she’ll be taking care of a child, with no days off and for 600 QAR ($165) per month.

Domestic workers in the surveyed countries require a local sponsor, to whom their work visa is tied. The sponsorship creates dependency and vulnerability and makes exploitation much more likely. As the report remarked “As the immigration sponsor, the employer can typically have the domestic worker repatriated at will, provide or withhold consent on whether she can change jobs, and in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, obstruct her ability to leave the country. In practice, termination of employment often means the worker is obliged to leave the country immediately with no opportunity to seek redress for abuses or settlement of unpaid wages… Migrant domestic workers who leave their employment without their employer’s consent lose their legal status, making them subject to immigration penalties and deportation.”

We’ve previously reported how an unpaid Indian worker (read: slave) resorted to hiding in an airplane bathroom to be able to return home, after his abusive employer wouldn’t return his passport and give him permission to leave. Other employers, once their domestic workers muster up the courage to report the abuse, often counter-accuse the worker of committing crimes like theft of running away, and the police sometimes takes their side. We previously reported about a Sri Lankan maid who ended up in a Jordanian hospital after her employer beat her. When she complained, the employer accused the maid of theft and child abuse and the maid was arrested while still recovering from her injuries.

The invisibility of domestic workers in the homes of their sponsors to the outside world creates an increased risk of abuse, sexual harassment, food deprivation, and forced confinement. “In the worst cases, domestic workers may become trapped in situations of forced labor, trafficking, or slavery, or they die from murder, botched escape attempts, or suicide”, the report states. As we’ve documented, the high numbers of domestic workers taking their lives in Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is extremely worrisome and attests to the poor living and working conditions those housemaids have to endure.

The justice system in most Middle Eastern countries discriminates against migrant workers. As the report remarked, “Human Rights Watch has documented patterns in which the combination of poorly conducted investigations, lengthy trials, and weak enforcement of judgments combine to pressure victims of violence into accepting small financial settlements, a return ticket home, or nothing at all.” Last year we mentioned the case of an abused Sri Lankan maid who ran away from her Bahraini sponsor and approached the police, only to be returned to him. We also reported about the case of an Indian maid who was severely abused by her Bahraini sponsor who returned to India five months after the case was filed, and yet no charges was brought against her abusive sponsors.

Labor and Immigration Reforms

The report discusses the positive reforms in the labor and immigration laws made by regional governments. Unfortunately, other than in Jordan, regional governments do not include domestic workers under the protection of its labor laws. Other regional governments, like the UAE and Lebanon, introduced the standard employment contract, which regulates the domestic worker’s wages, but “falls short of providing the comprehensive protections provided under national labor laws”, the report noted. The contracts, which are also in use of private recruitment agencies in Saudi Arabia, do not give housemaids a weekly day off, it does not limit their working hours, and permits employers to forcibly keep their maids indoors. The reformed laws in Jordan still allows employers to hold their domestic worker’s passport and prohibit them from leaving the house, even on rest days. Changes in the sponsorship system in Kuwait and Bahrain excluded domestic workers.

Exposure to Racism and Sexism

The report notes that “Government officials, employers, and recruitment agents often make arguments against reform that reveal deep racial and gender stereotypes about migrant women and men, and the insecurities of wealthy elites that may feel physically and culturally threatened by large migrant populations but are also deeply dependent on them.” As we’ve shown, media reports in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE portray domestic workers as abusive sneaky witches, lazy liars and criminals. In addition to this “A second set of tensions around immigration reform center on sexual stereotypes and fears. Employers commonly describe their fear of migrant men or express stereotypes of migrant women as either sexually loose or as innocent and naïve in order to justify their practices of confining migrant domestic workers to the home and prohibiting them from taking a day off”, the report states.

The Human Rights Watch report paints a bleak picture about the rights of migrant domestic workers in the region. Despite the reforms, there is still a long way to go before domestic workers can arrive to the Middle East without fear of being abused, exploited, discriminated against and ignored by authorities.

One such case is of Ram Thapa who was told that he can get a job that would pay $1,000 per month in Afghanistan working as a security guard, which will allow him to provide better for his family. The recruiter demanded $3,900 to get Ram there, a sum that he had to borrow. When Ram arrived in Afghanistan two years ago, he discovered that the job he was promised did not exist. He was forced to wait for four months before given any work. Ram is still trapped in Afghanistan, working on repaying his debt without being able to send any money back to his family.

Those men are unable to escape their Afghani traffickers and Nepali loan-sharks and continue living in conditions that can only be described as modern-day slavery.

As we’ve previously mentioned, the couple held a 17-year-old girl and two Iraqi women in an apartment in Sharjah and forced them to have sex with clients by threats of beatings. The girl was also forced to work as a stripper. Earlier reports suggested that she was 13.

We consider a three year sentence to be extremely lenient for people who have destroyed the lives of three women. If the UAE wants to change its image of an infamous human trafficking center, it should start by handing serious sentences for such grievous crimes.

In 2007, Nepal passed the Foreign Employment Act, which forbids women from working overseas in informal sectors such as domestic service in countries that don’t offer them adequate protection. However, Nepal has struggled to enforce its laws, since there are many poor and uneducated women who have to work abroad in order to support their families. To circumvent the ban, women cross the border to India with the help of traffickers, from where they fly to the Gulf. When the women arrive in the Gulf without a legal work contract, they are even more vulnerable to abuse since they can’t turn to the police for help.

The report includes the stories of two women who were brought to the Gulf with the help of unscrupulous traffickers. Lalita Rai, 22, traveled to Kuwait with a promise to work in a beauty parlor a little over a year ago. Upon arrival, the trafficker took her passport and brought her to a house where she will be forced to work as a maid without any pay. Rai was physically abused and kept locked in the house until she managed to escape this October. Jamuna Chaudhary, 18, suffered a similar fate. She was brought to Abu Dhabi, and tricked into working as a maid. Chaudhary was sexually assaulted by her employer and his friend; she managed to escape and leave the country with the help of the Nepali embassy.

Two weeks after she had arrived to the sponsor’s house, her abuse began. She was constantly molested, asked to massage a man’s privates, and threatened that if she refused, she won’t get paid. At her first chance to escape, the woman fled her employer and ended up in a shelter run by Indonesian. But the relief she felt was misleading – she was sold to a pimp for $1,300 and forced to work as a sex slave. She was raped and sodomized for over a year on a daily basis. She managed to escape when Saudi police raided the brothel. However, her misery didn’t end there; she was jailed for six months and only then deported back home.

The woman reported her case to the police, but the Indonesian agency that employed her has since disappeared.