This spring marks 10 years since the publication of a highly critical UN report on the use of the kafala labour system in Qatar. Its recommendation, primarily linked to the rampant use of migrant construction workers in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup, was indubitable – abolish kafala and introduce reforms to secure basic human rights.
While some labour reforms were introduced in the wake of the report, experts say they have done little to protect these workers. And rather than acting as a moment of reckoning, kafala has now metastasised across the Middle East.
The journalist Katie McQue has spent two years documenting the struggles of domestic workers in the kafala system across the Middle East.
“I started this project a few years ago while living in Dubai,” she says. “I met some of these women in person, including Sophia* and her young daughter. They were jailed in Dubai’s Al Awir prison because Sophia had ‘absconded’ from her abusive employer and was living in the UAE without a visa. I’m still in touch with them, and they are still traumatised by their time in prison.”
Testimonies she gathered build a picture of a system in which women become completely subsumed into a world where exploitation and abuse are commonplace. Their human rights vanish.
“Most of the women I spoke to were still in the Gulf and working as domestic maids at the time of our interview,” McQue says. “It was striking that all 50 women I spoke to had similar stories of being denied freedom of movement and overworked.
“Some said their bosses told them they needed to get their ‘money’s worth out of them’, meaning they were working up to 19 hours a day. Many had been physically and sexually abused.”
Her investigation revealed indicators of human trafficking, and “grave violations of human rights”, according to experts. “The kafala system facilitates slavery because it keeps people from having any rights. It keeps them under an absolute regime of control,” said one.
Yet, without international pressure, true change to the kafala system is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Rosie Swash, editor of the Future of Work series
*name has been changed |
