In April 2009 the BBC broadcast a documentary entitled ‘Slumdogs and Millionaires’. Made by a team of hardened investigative journalists from the corporation’s flagship current affirs show Panorama, it contained footage of appalling conditions endured by South Asian construction workers - cramped housing, overflowing sewerage, poor ventilation and a rate of pay which made a nutritious diet impossible. Poverty in South Asia is hardly news, but these Indian, Pakistan and Bangladeshi workers were not in South Asia; rather they were migrant workers plying their trade in one of the world’s richest states – the United Arab Emirates - whose gleaming feats of architectural largesse have tended to blind the world’s gaze from the reality of the UAE, which is a shocking story of exploitation, racial discrimination and enslavement of a migrant workforce in excess of three million.
The BBC’s footage would not have come as any surprise to anyone familiar with the UAE but it represents the most high-profile embarrassment yet for its ruling elite. Furthermore, its allegations did not stop at sub-standard housing and dangerous working and living conditions. It outlined a labour system which was designed to ensure almost complete control over workers, and it is a system which is found not only in the UAE, but in its Gulf neighbours Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. And it does constitute slavery, no matter how hyperbolic a statement that may seem.
Unlike traditional forms of slavery, whose key controlling mechanism was the legal ownership of an enslaved individual and concomitant legal rights, in the Gulf model of slavery there is no one mechanism which in itself effects control between master and slave. Instead, various factors combine to produce a level of control similar to that produced by historical manifestations of slavery. The first of these is debt – recruitment agents in South Asian states give out loans at exorbitant rates of interest to largely uneducated and often illiterate workers. The original debt is then supplemented by the illegitimate imposition of visa and flight costs and, upon arrival in the Gulf, the worker is forced to sign a new contract, which pays a fraction of the salary he was originally promised. This has the effect of significantly increasing the time for which a migrant worker is effectively bonded. Instead of one year, it could now take up to four or five years to repay the debt - more if the worker happens to be resident in a state whose currency is tied to a falling US dollar i.e. all of them except Kuwait. To complement the control exerted by a huge debt, employers systematically confiscate their employees’ passports. Even if a worker were able to raise the money for an air-fare to return home to his family (unlikely since a typical monthly salary is $100 - $150, the vast majority of which is tied up in debt repayment) he would not be able to do so. Employers routinely abuse the power which such a system grants them, and they do so in the knowledge that a worker cannot transfer employers without their express permission. In isolation, this system of sponsorship-based employment, known across the Gulf as the kafala system, has been analogized to slavery. In recognition of the appalling abuses it facilitates, Bahrain became the first state to pledge to abolish the kafala system in 2009.
The traditional avenues of redress which workers pursue are either de facto or de jure denied to migrant workers in the Gulf. Trade unions are prohibited, and there is a region-wide ban on industrial action. The UAE has employed draconian tactics to counter the possibility of the mobilization of anything resembling a workers’ organization, imprisoning, beating or simply deporting suspects. The bodies charged with upholding and protecting migrant workers’ rights typically work in direct contravention of their mandate, and are a key factor in the system. Despite grave and extensive abuses, ranging from the commonplace non-payment of wages, to more serious allegations of physical and sexual abuse, the instances of migrant workers receiving any form of redress are very much the exception to the rule.
One of the most saddening aspects of this sorry affair, which affects approximately 12 million individuals and 12 million families ‘back home’, is the absence of any meaningful internal or external pressure. Domestic critics of Gulf polities are silenced by the ruling elites whose extensive business interests render the countries closer in character to corporations than states. The media, with the notable exception of an extremely courageous Al-Jazeera network, practices self-censorship and in turn this then stifles the potential for civil society engagement with the issue. On the international plane, the huge geo-political influence of the Gulf states (which will only increase as the crisis in Iran unfolds) mutes criticism. NGOs such as Human Rights Watch have done admirable work, and the international press has been forthright and bold in its criticism, but as long as the international community holds its tongue, the Gulf states will continue to act with impunity.
The author is the founder and director of Mafiwasta, an organization for migrant workers’ rights in the United Arab Emirates and a phd candidate at the European University Institute in Florence Italy.
Nicholas McGeehan