Politics
Saudi Arabia accused of widespread abuses of migrant workers
The UK’s arms partner, Saudi Arabia, has been accused by African trade unions of persistent and widespread violations and abuses of migrant workers’ rights, and is now seeking to dismiss a formal complaint at the International Labour Organisation on the matter despite ongoing evidence of forced labour and abuse, according to Amnesty International.
According to Amnesty, the complaint documents widespread forced labour, wage theft, physical and sexual abuse and systemic racism, particularly — but not exclusively — targeting African migrant workers who experienced being locked in homes, forced to work 18 to 20 hours a day, denied wages, healthcare and rest, and subjected to beatings and harassment.
Amnesty is urging ILO member states like the UK not to let the complaint be buried during the 356th Session of the ILO Governing Body, which runs from 23 March to 2 April.
In January, the Government of Saudi Arabia responded to the complaint and asked for it to be dismissed.
Vulnerable workers in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf
Across the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — migrant workers form the backbone of oil and gas-rich economies, according to the Business and Human Rights Centre.
The region’s population is roughly 60 million, of whom more than half are migrants.
However, a pattern of human rights violations across the GCC of migrant labour has been seen.
India’s Firstpost reported last year that thousands of Indian nationals face imprisonment or death sentences in the region. In the UAE, 29 Indians are on death row. In Saudi Arabia, 12 are facing execution. Migrant workers endure harsh conditions. Employers often confiscate their passports. Local laws are applied rigidly.
Qatar hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2022.
Burnt of Iran’s retaliatory strikes
Unsurprisingly, these workers are also facing the repercussions of Trump’s illegal war on Iran.
According to Al Jazeera, of the eight people killed in the UAE in Iranian retaliatory strikes, five were from South Asia. Three people killed in Oman were from India. An Indian and a Bangladeshi national were the only deaths in Saudi Arabia. Millions of migrant workers now face job losses and fear as the conflict escalates.
Despite the danger, most South Asian migrant labour in the Gulf appears to be staying on for now, according to DW.
“Economic survival trumps perceived risks for the vast majority” of workers, Harsh Pant, head of the strategic studies program at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a New Delhi think tank, told DW.
Scholar Adam Hanieh has shown that the “racialised and gendered” characteristics of the working class population in the Gulf States favour temporary workers. Hanieh wrote:
…in the case of the Gulf Arab states, the pronounced shift away from Arab to Asian workers through the 1990s and 2000s was likewise conceived as a means of discouraging workers from forming bonds of cultural belonging, and was also organised through the spatial separation of these workers from local Gulf citizens.
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