Please, Abuse our People!

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Please, Abuse our People!

By Nimr ⋅ December 10, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

While I feel the Gulf gets scapegoated a lot of the time, the widespread mistreatment of migrant workers in the region is beyond reprehensible. Although clearly the blame falls on the local employers some of the responsibility for perpetuating the situation falls on the governments of the countries that provide the labor. Sadly, the importance of remittance payments to these countries tends to trump the human rights of their citizens working abroad. That is why it is so painful to watch the governments of the Philippines and Vietnam tripping over themselves to ensure that their people can continue to ~~suffer abuse~~ work in the Gulf.

“This is a very serious situation,” said opposition Sen. Jinggoy Estrada. “We are faced with a scinario where hundreds of thousands of overseas-based Filipinos might be forced to return to the country where they might not be able to find jobs either.”

Trust me, plenty of overseas Filipinos would love to return home.

It is incredible to me that SAARC and ASEAN (which provide the overwhelming majority of migrant laborers) cannot pressure collectively for the protection of their citizens. What is the point of these kinds of organizations if not this kind of work? Do you know why you never hear about an abused Pakistani house maid? Because the government doesn’t let women go abroad to do this kind of work.* This summer there were several stories about Gulf governments reforming their legal code and there have been some pilot intra-governmental cooperation, but the efficacy of these changes is yet to be seen. If nothing else, it seems the Gulf is getting a bit more self-conscience about all the bad publicity.

It is worth noting that many of the labor laws in the region are surprisingly progressive. The main, but not only, problems are the lack of enforcement and that issues of domestic workers are handled in family court. Although change can not come fast enough, my monitoring of several newspapers in the region seems to indicate that some of the restrictions on coverage of the issue are becoming more lax. That coupled with the courageous work of organizations like the Bahraini Migrant Workers Protection Society, does give us a ray of hope.

Here is some good coverage for those who care:

-Yet another great installment of the Doha Debates on the subject of Gulf Arabs valuing profit over people.

–The Daily Star has an interesting review of a new documentary about domestic workers in Lebanon, Maid in Lebanon.

*The reasons for this ban come from the wacky rule of Zia-ul-Haqq and is problematic in its own right, but still remains instructive of what governments can do to protect their workers abroad.

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