In September 2006, Heba El-Shazli, the Solidarity Center’s Director of Middle East and North Africa Programs, traveled to the Gulf region with Regional Country Program Director Laurie Clements and Regional Program Officer Dan Cork, to investigate migrant worker rights conditions in Qatar and Dubai.

Qatar’s Sponsorship Law Restricts Worker Rights

An Indonesian housemaid is lying in a coma at the local hospital because her Qatari sponsor (employer) severely beat her. She will never regain consciousness.

A sick Indian worker from Kerala is lucky to have the air conditioning left on in this desert environment as he recuperates in the 15 x 30 foot cinderblock room that he shares with 12 other men. His sponsor provided the housing, commonly called a “labor camp.”

In 2006, worker rights problems are numerous in Qatar, a small nation in the Gulf region of the Arabian Peninsula. Two-thirds of Qatar’s 800,000 inhabitants are migrant workers, mostly from Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. A 1963 “sponsor law” controls the “importation of labor—white and blue collar.” A Ministry of Interior official says the law “gives workers an opportunity to come to Doha and work safely.” But the current law provides neither an opportunity nor safety for workers. Instead, it creates an imbalance of power between the worker and the sponsor. Here is how it works.

A Qatari company (sometimes run by a foreign national) or private citizen—the sponsor—procures a visa for a worker and thereby controls that worker’s movements for the duration of his or her contract while in Qatar. The worker cannot change jobs, leave the country, buy a car, or rent a home without the sponsor’s permission. Low-paid industrial laborers' passports are routinely confiscated. If they complain about the sponsor or try to run away, workers are often sent to the Deportation Center—a jail—pending an investigation. Although sponsors are required to give workers an end-of-year bonus, a return airline ticket, and medical insurance, failure to do so is often not enforced. For a 12- to 14-hour shift, a worker earns about $120 per month. Low-wage workers frequently complain that employers pay them late or not at all, deny them overtime wages, house them in substandard living quarters with no running water, lure them with false contracts, and refuse to give back their passports at the end of their contract. An Egyptian worker said: “I want to raise my children and educate them so they do not have to suffer like me.”

Employment and recruitment agencies are largely unregulated in the countries of origin. Many force workers to pay up to $2,000 in advance, plunging them into debt even before leaving their own country. Upon arrival, they may find that there is no job after all. As undocumented workers, they are vulnerable to trafficking, or they may disappear into the informal economy.

Earlier this year, in preparation for the 2006 Asian Games, the capital city of Doha was a huge construction site. To meet the opening deadline, workers put in long shifts in the blazing sun. Temperatures regularly topped 100 degrees. More than 60 young Nepali workers, unused to the hot climate, died of heart attacks. Unsafe equipment resulted in more deaths and injuries. The situation is no better for domestic workers, mostly young women, who face physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of their sponsors.

In 2004, with Qatar increasingly in the international spotlight for human rights problems, the country established the National Human Rights Committee and the National Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons. The NOCTIP manages a shelter that can house up to 14 abused men, women, and children, but the shelter is underused. The NHRC issues yearly reports and regular press releases. Its greatest success has been uncovering the horror of child camel jockeys, some as young as three years old. This abusive practice is now banned nationwide. The NHRC is pushing for labor law reform and worker rights.

Glittering Dubai Built on the Backs of Migrant Workers

Dubai is by far the most developed, advanced, and sophisticated of the seven emirates that comprise the UAE. Grand-scale construction and massive infrastructure projects such as airports and state-of-the-art shopping malls employ hundreds of thousands of migrant workers (only 800,000 of the UAE’s 4 million inhabitants are native citizens). These workers, primarily in low-wage and semi-professional jobs, come to Dubai from all over the world, especially India (1.8 million), Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. As part of the construction boom, they work long hours in a desert climate where daily temperatures reach more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. They earn about $143-$171 per month. Like their brothers in Qatar, they live in poorly built labor camps, packed 12 to 14 into a tin-roofed cinderblock room located more than an hour away from the construction site. Every month, more than 10 construction workers fall to their deaths from building sites. “Eight hundred deaths per year in UAE and 90 percent in Dubai,” reported a senior writer at Construction Week newsletter.

The UAE labor law does not cover domestic workers. Many are physically and sexually abused. Stories abound of housemaids who try to escape their employers’ homes knowing neither the address nor the phone number, nor even the family’s full name. Some end up in hospitals, victims of rape. Rarely is an employer prosecuted. Authorities are threatening to shut down Dubai’s only shelter for women and children survivors of violence, including women domestic workers who have suffered abuse by their employers. The best that an abused domestic worker can hope for is an airline ticket back home and a lifetime of shame.

Migrant workers who seek justice face many obstacles. First, there are only 70 to 80 labor inspectors for more than 3 million workers. Because the official language of the labor ministry is Arabic, workers also must deal with a language barrier. They are not allowed to take legal counsel or an embassy representative with them when they file a complaint. In addition, many labor officials themselves employ migrant workers, a clear conflict of interest. Recently, the UAE claimed that migrant workers are actually temporary workers and therefore exempt from international labor standards that protect migrant workers. The reality is that South Asian workers, even though they may be hired on a contractual basis for a limited duration, are still workers, and therefore their human and workers rights should be protected, no matter how long they stay in the UAE.

Freedom of association in the UAE is limited to general welfare organizations. Among the most active are the Teachers Association, which provides a forum in which members can discuss workplace issues and raise them with the ministry of education; the Journalists Association, which engages with the government about the role of the free press in UAE life and is an active member of the International Federation of Journalists; and the Jurists Association, composed of lawyers, judges, public prosecutors, and other legal practitioners. A former publisher of annual human rights reports, the association is now under constant surveillance and is virtually banned.

In March 2006, the UAE announced that it was taking the first steps toward full freedom of association. For the first time, workers would be allowed to join a union, take strike action, and engage in collective bargaining with employers, according to a proposed amendment to the country’s 1980 labor law. The proposal was announced against a backdrop of recent demonstrations by migrant construction workers building the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper. A protest by 2,500 Asian workers over alleged mistreatment, arbitrary salary deductions, non-payment of overtime, and lack of on-site medical facilities boiled over into violence and resulted in $1 million in damages. Worker and human rights organizations hailed the UAE announcement as a positive development. But only months later, a new law decreed that any migrant worker instigating or taking part in an “illegal” strike could be deported and banned from returning to the UAE for a year. The UAE labor minister had this to say about workers unions: “Each country has its own policy and its own system and has the right to agree or not to agree to allow the workers unions or associations.” His remarks raise further questions about whether the UAE is serious about pressing for the proposed amendment.

In November 2006, the government announced a series of measures to address the key problems associated with exploitation of migrant workers in the country:

Negotiate and sign Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka to establish a minimum wage for migrant workers, an arbitration mechanism, and stringent measures toward recruiting companies.
Expand its capacity to enforce decent living conditions in the country’s labor camps.
Establish specialized labor courts to ensure timely and effective resolution of all labor disputes.
Educate workers on their rights and responsibilities under the UAE Labor Law and the MOUs.

By acknowledging the existence of significant problems facing migrant workers within its borders, the UAE has taken a step in the right direction. But it should invite both the business community and workers themselves to participate. Corporations must take some responsibility for health and safety. Workers should be actively involved in educating fellow workers about their rights. The government also should tap into community organizations, which have existing relationships with the workers and can translate materials into a language that workers understand.