kafala — World News, Travel and Social Action

Ninety percent of Dubai's residents are migrant workers, many of whom are experiencing abuse from their employers.

Construction Workers on the Promenade of Dubai. Paul Keller. CC BY 2.0

Dubai is known as the city of gold due to its rapid growth, from a global gulf port to a busy business city center. Migrant workers arrive from Asia, Africa and different parts of the Middle East through the sponsorship program kafala. The program gives employers the permits necessary to hire foreign labor workers and gives employers complete control over the legal status of whom they’ve hired. In some cases, this causes a power imbalance among the employer and employee relationship. In addition to being exploited through the sponsorship program, migrant workers have accused employers of various forms of abuse.

Migrant workers often arrive in Dubai in hopes of making a steady income to provide for their families back home. Dubai has a high demand for labor workers and provides better opportunities to migrant workers. Therefore, they take on jobs in construction or domestic work, such as nannying, housekeeping or other household services. At times, they’re promised a higher wage or a different job description; however, after arriving, that promise was broken. Migrant workers receive their wages on a monthly basis and are required to work weekends, with an average of 16-21 hour days. Overworked migrants cannot leave the job until their contract is terminated, as those are the conditions under the kafala sponsorship. If one decides to leave, the employer can have the worker sent to prison for six months, deported and/or fined $27,225 for not abiding by the contract.

Migrant Worker Cleaning a Mall in Dubai. Iwona Rege. BY-ND 2.0

This very strict rule under the kafala sponsorship forces employees to continue working under very stressful conditions. Fear of what could happen to them binds them to their employer until the contract is completed. Due to these conditions, migrant workers have complained that employers have not paid them their wages, delayed the wages or have had their passports taken from them; preventing them from leaving. At Dubai’s Expo 2020, migrant workers claimed their employers violated UAE labor laws, with one interviewee saying, “the way they treat the staff is like slaves, I mean modern day slavery.” Women have reported being raped by their employer as well as family members for the home they work in. However, there has been no action taken against these accused employers.

With the pandemic, cases got worse as most employers did not pay the migrant workers their wages. The lack of income left workers stranded in Dubai with no money to fly back home or provide themselves with basic needs. A Sri Lankan embassy source based in Dubai said, “the two most common complaints from the worker are that employers don’t give them salaries and that they are harassed either physically, sexually or verbally.” The UAE has settled requirements that help protect migrant workers rights, yet there has been non-compliance and no way to ensure workers are not being abused and/or taken advantage of.

To Get Involved: The organization Migrant-Rights advocates the rights of migrant workers affected by the kafala sponsorship program. They also assist migrant workers who need assistance.

To learn more click here.

To support Migrant-Rights’ organization click here.

Saudi Arabia has begun lifting up its struggling migrant workers with its most recent initiative. However, what this decision truly means in terms of effective change remains uncertain.

Saudi women. Mohd Azli Abdul Malek.CC By-NC-SA 2.0.

Saudi Arabia recently kick-started the “Labor Relation Initiative” that will eliminate policies tightly binding migrant workers to their sponsors. It is expected that the changes will begin in March 2021, potentially impacting up to one-third of the nation’s population. This initiative may be the beginning of the end of the notorious “kafala” system that has been under international scrutiny since its conception in the 1950s.

The kafala sponsorship system, which is currently practiced in most Persian Gulf states, began about 70 years ago to create a beneficial flow in the migrant labor force. Workers are assigned a sponsor, or “kafeel,” for their decided contract period. The sponsor may be a single person or a company. The sponsor has complete control over the worker’s ability to change jobs or enter and exit the country; written permission must be granted for any changes. Thus, the worker must report all related activity to the sponsor, and failure to do so will result in criminal punishment. The sponsor must then report all activity to the immigration authorities, and fund the worker’s entry and exit.

Essentially, the kafeel is the migrant’s legal tie to the country, leaving the worker no choice but to acquiesce. The kafala system has allowed kafeels to exercise excessive control over their workers, such as taking their travel documents; this is illegal, though, in some of the countries that practice the system. The kafala system has faced much criticism with claims that it is a gateway to modern slavery; there have been many reports of forced work and sexual abuse. However, it appears that the intense exploitation of workers over the years may potentially begin to close with Saudi Arabia’s new Labor Relation Initiative.

The initiative now allows workers to move their sponsorship to other jobs and to cross the border without permission of their kafeel. The policy is only one aspect of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “Vision 2030,” in which he aims to increase international economic activity. Many are hopeful that this initiative will bring about substantial change for not only the current 10 million impacted workers, but also future generations who would benefit from the complete abolishment of the kafala system.

Others are wary of holding out hope, stating that ties to a sponsor would need to be completely cut in order for change to be sustained. At the moment, this limited reform has not clarified whether all migrant workers are shielded, nor whether sponsors can still report their workers for running away. Concerns over this unanswered portion of the policy bring much fear; a worker whose travel documents have been invalidated by their sponsor faces immediate deportation.

Maybe this initiative will end the process for good, or perhaps it is merely a camouflaged political scheme. Regardless, much hope remains that the injustices of the kafala system will be reduced.