How the Kafala System Ensures Abuse for Migrant Workers in the Gulf
There are 24 million migrant workers in Arab states, amassing 41 percent of the region’s total workforce.[1] Most of these workers are from South Asia and Africa and seek jobs in the Middle East on promises of high wages to send back to their families.[2] Many face the reality of rampant abuse on arrival. The system that ensures this abuse is called the Kafala (sponsorship) system, which is present in all Arab Gulf countries, except for Iraq, plus Lebanon, and Jordan.[3]
Under the Kafala system, individuals or companies can sponsor permits to employ foreign laborers.[4] The sponsor pays for travel expenses and provides dorm housing for the workers.[5] Sponsors often use recruitment agencies to find workers in their home countries.[6] Workers often do not get the protection of their home country’s labor laws because the system usually is governed by interior ministries rather than labor ministries.[7] Workers’ employment and residency visas are linked and only sponsors can renew or terminate them, giving them tremendous power in the relationship.[8] These characteristics of the Kafala system create a dynamic where the migrant worker is at the mercy of the employer, facilitating exploitation and abuse. “It essentially means impunity for abuses against workers," said Rothna Begum, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.[9] Often workers need their sponsor’s permission to end employment, leave the country, or transfer jobs.[10] Even if a worker is trying to flee abuse, leaving the workplace without permission results in a termination of legal status and imprisonment or deportation.[11] Experts have characterized the relationship as modern-day slavery.[12]
This system of abuse has deadly consequences. This was most recently highlighted in world news by the recent World Cup in Qatar. Between 2010 to 2020, as Qatar prepared to host the international soccer tournament, more than 6,500 migrant workers from South Asia died in Qatar.[13] This number only accounts for South Asian migrant workers and only counts up to the final months of 2020, meaning that the actual death count from just this one event is much higher.[14] Many of these casualties were a result of “natural causes” often attributed to heart or respiratory failure from the intense Qatari heat.[15] It has been found that cardiovascular disease deaths among Nepali migrant workers were up 58% during the hot season and as many as 35% of these deaths could have been prevented by effective heat prevention.[16] Every year, as many as 10,000 migrant workers from Asia alone die in the Gulf countries.[17]
Beyond safety violations that lead to deaths, other abusive practices are common. First, recruitment agencies regularly use deception and coercion to recruit workers while promising them lucrative jobs.[18] Then, many workers find that they have to pay the recruitment fees required of employers but which often are passed down to the workers.[19] This leads workers to take out loans or become indebted to the employer, who then may withhold or reduce their wages to pay recruiters.[20] Then workers find that they have been tricked into accepting worse wages and poor working conditions by signing multiple contracts often in languages that they don’t understand.[21] Everything promised to the worker in their home country may be void as soon as they arrive, leaving them in debt and with worse pay and conditions than they ever imagined.[22] With unpaid wages, no rest days, and limited access to justice, the abuses are numerous.[23]
Not only is there an imbalance of power between the worker and the employee that leads to this exploitation, there is also a difference in power between the host countries and the home countries that allows for this system to stay in place. The home countries of many migrants are dependent on the inflow of cash sent home by the migrants—This figure was $124 billion in just 2017.[24] Countries like Nepal, where remittances account for as much as 25% of the nation’s total economic output, are scared of taking measures to protect migrant workers as this could hurt migration and cash flow.[25] Recruitment agencies and employers often lobby for favorable laws to protect them in migrant’s home countries.[26]
While some changes have been made to the Kafala system, especially in Qatar in response to backlash from the World Cup, these changes often lack implementation to make a substantial change.[27] Major labor reform is still needed in the Gulf countries and in migrant’s home countries to ensure that these abuses are eliminated.
Anil Bhandari is a staff member of Fordham International Law Journal Volume XLVI.
[1] Labour Migration, International Labour Organization, https://www.ilo.org/beirut/areasofwork/labour-migration/lang--en/index.htm#1 (last visited April 11, 2023).
[2] Kali Robinson, What Is the Kafala System?, Council on Foreign Relations (Nov. 18, 2022), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-kafala-system#chapter-title-0-4 (last visited April 11, 2023).
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Maya Gebeilly, Five Reasons Why it’s Hard to Stop Migrant Abuse in the Gulf, Thomson Reuters Foundation (Oct. 21, 2021), https://news.trust.org/item/20211021095547-uv9m8 (last visited April 11, 2023).
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Pete Pattisson et al., Revealed: 6,500 Migrant Workers Have Died in Qatar Since World Cup Awarded, The Guardian (Feb. 23, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar-fifa-world-cup-2022 (last visited April 11, 2023).
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Pradhan B. et al., Heat Stress Impacts on Cardiac Mortality in Nepali Migrant Workers in Qatar, Cardiology (2019), https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/500853 (last vistited April 12, 2023).
[17] Katie McQue, Up to 10,000 Asian Migrant Workers Die in the Gulf Every Year, Claims Report, The Guardian (Mar. 11, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/mar/11/up-to-10000-asian-migrant-workers-die-in-the-gulf-every-year-claims-report (last visited April 11, 2023).
[18] Diwakar Rai, Why Nepal Sends so Many Migrant Workers to the Middle East, DW (Nov. 1, 2022), https://www.dw.com/en/why-nepal-sends-so-many-migrant-workers-to-the-middle-east/a-63616875#:~:text=Nepali%20workers%20have%20formed%20a,are%20employed%20at%20construction%20sites (last visited April 11, 2023).
[19] Id.
[20] Robinson, supra note 2.
[21] Thore Schroder, Humiliation and Abuse in Lebanon's Kafala System, Spiegel International (Jun. 7, 2020), https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/humiliation-and-abuse-in-lebanon-s-kafala-system-a-a30c9a0c-6a7a-466b-b335-78350b8d06f6 (last visited April 11, 2023).
[22] Id.
[23] Qatar: Labour Reform Unfinished and Compensation Still Owed as World Cup Looms, Amnesty International (Oct. 20, 2022), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/10/qatar-labour-reform-unfinished-and-compensation-still-owed-as-world-cup-looms/ (last visited April 11, 2023).
[24] Gebeilly, supra note 9.
[25] Id.
[26] Id.
[27] Amnesty International, supra note 23.
This is a student blog post and in no way represents the views of the Fordham International Law Journal.