Human Trafficking in [Kuwait Street Children in [Kuwait] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Kuwait] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In
the first ten years of the 21st Century -
2000 to 2009
Kuwait is
a destination country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of forced
labor. The majority of trafficking victims are from among the over 500,000
foreign women recruited for domestic service work in Kuwait. Men and women
migrate from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan,
and Bangladesh in search of work in the domestic and sanitation industries.
Although they migrate willingly to Kuwait, upon arrival some are subjected to
conditions of forced labor from their “sponsors” and labor agents, such as
withholding of passports, confinement, physical sexual abuse and threats of
such abuse or other serious harm, and non-payment of wages with the intent of
compelling their continued service. Adult female migrant workers are
particularly vulnerable, and consequently are often victims of sexual
exploitation and forced prostitution.
- U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009 [full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been culled
from the web to illuminate the situation in *** FEATURED
ARTICLE *** KUWAIT - Nearly 2,000 women domestic
workers every year since the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 have fled the homes
of abusive employers. These women are mainly from Sri Lanka, the Philippines,
Bangladesh, and India. They report patterns of rape and physical assault,
with debt bondage and illegal confinement being common. Kuwait has long
depended on foreign workers to be the backbone on its labor. Unfortunately,
Kuwait's law excludes domestic workers from their labor law protections. The
maids' exclusion from the labor law creates isolation and denies them even
minimal protection against unfair practices. Because of the isolation and the
stigma of sexual assault, most domestic workers face many obstacles and are
deterred from reporting employer abuse to the authorities. ***
ARCHIVES *** Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – The
country is a destination for men, women, and children trafficked primarily
from The physical or sexual abuse of
foreign women working as domestic servants was a problem. Some employers
physically abused foreign women working as domestic servants, and despite
economic and social difficulties for a domestic servant to lodge a complaint,
these women continued to report such abuse. The local press devoted
considerable attention to the problem, and both the police and courts have
taken action against employers when presented with evidence of serious abuse.
Some rapes resulted in pregnancies, and there were reports of illegal
abortions. Occasionally domestic workers were charged with assaulting their
employers; in such cases the workers claimed that they acted in response to
physical abuse or poor working conditions. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights [41] The Committee recommends that
the State party take effective measures to combat trafficking in persons,
especially in women and children, by ensuring, inter alia, that those
responsible for trafficking are prosecuted, and to ratify the Protocol to
Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and
Children, of 2001. The Committee recommends that the State party establish
support services for victims of trafficking and take steps to sensitize law
enforcement officials and the general public to the gravity of this issue. 200 Kuwaitis, 40 firms blacklisted over human trafficking www.arabtimesonline.com/kuwaitcrime/pagesdetails.asp?nid=22525&ccid=22
HUMAN TRADERS, FIRMS BANNED - Two hundred Kuwaitis and 40 companies
have been blacklisted and banned from recruiting domestic laborers due to
their alleged involvement in human trafficking, Al-Watan
Arabic daily quoted informed sources as saying. Meanwhile, 500 expatriates were arrested
for violating the residency law and were referred to authorities. Governing Justly and Combating Human Trafficking: The
Linkages www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/rm/07/96171.htm At one
time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
In many countries in the Kuwait
lashes U.S. human rights report Rejecting the accusation made by
the U.S. report saying Kuwaitis running human trafficking in an excuse of
reducing global joblessness, the committee said in the statement that
"The State of Kuwait opens its arms to those incoming workers and even provides
them with all available job opportunities, unlike many other countries which
combat and deport them on the grounds of fighting illegal
immigration." "By doing so,
Kuwait ought to be commended, appreciated and even placed on an honors
list," it added. New labor regulations and
civilized working laws that leave no place for the sponsor's moods and
thoughts must be enforced. One issue that many maids complain about is that
they have no rights in deciding their place of work meaning they have no say
when their sponsor moves them from one house to another, like the house of a
sponsor's relative or friend. If we had a clear law to prevent
their sponsors from acting freely in this matter, many troubles could be
solved in this regard. Not all sponsors are doing this, but some are so we
have to think about how to eliminate such actions. Giving a day off for a
maid seems a small issue but it was a problem for many maids here. House
maids are not supposed to work around the clock and their rights in these
matters must be clear and must be respected by their sponsors. The wages and the means of payment
are also problems for many workers and they need a policy to protect their
rights and not only the sponsor's rights. These matters started as a molehill
but have now turned into a mountain because there has never been a visible
solution to handle it over the years. The sponsorship system needs a quick
revision and update based on international laws and human rights laws
especially regarding working hours and wages with days off. New study shames human traffickers www.eastandard.net/archives/cl/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143968455 At one
time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Countries in the A new report by an international
trade unions’ umbrella organisation says Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab
Emirates and Yemen are notorious destinations for women trafficked from
Kenya. Its report, ‘Trafficking in
Persons — The Eastern Africa Situation’, notes that women and children were favourite targets for well-organised
trafficking rings, which operate freely for lack of solid laws against the
vice. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 4 Civil Liberties: 4 Status: Partly Free Human Rights Overview
by Human Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Two
sides of women's oppression DISMANTLING GUARANTEED RIGHTS - In these societies women are
literally slaves, imprisoned in the home and held captive within a repressive
patriarchal system. They have no right to work or control their own funds or
even to drive a car. They cannot even travel unaccompanied by a male family
member. They have no right to vote or to participate in any form of political
life. In Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and
throughout the oil-rich Gulf states, women have no rights that any man is bound
to respect. They have no right to decide who they will marry, nor do they
have a right to divorce, even from an abusive husband. Education is
separate--and so unequal that most women in oil-rich Saudi Arabia are still
illiterate. Ansar Burney Trust rescues two more
'Child Camel Jockeys' in UAE www.mengos.net/events/04newsevents/omanqataruaemain/children-trafficked.htm At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] The Ansar
Burney Welfare Trust International is the only human rights organisation working since last several years practically
against slave labour in Middle East and Arab
Countries to rescue the innocent children working as child camel jockeys in
very worst circumstances. It has rescued total 318 children in this current
year, 147 children on slave in UAE and 171 children from Qatar, Bahrain,
Saudi Arabia, Muscat, Kuwait and
other parts of the Arab and Middle East countries and sent them back to
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Srilanka and other respective
countries for their rehabilitation. These children were trafficked from
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and several countries in Africa and
brought to the Middle Eastern and Arab countries for several reasons
including for sex and slave labour. Slavery of Children and women in Persian gulf countries www.iranian.ws/cgi-bin/iran_news/exec/view.cgi/2/2675 At one
time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
Exact number of victims is
impossible to obtain, but according to an official source in UAE, there has
been increase in the number of teen-age girls in prostitution (forced to work
from Country
Reports on Human Rights Practice - 2003 WOMEN - There were some reports of women,
mainly from Asia, who were trafficked into the country into situations of
coerced labor, where they often suffered from physical abuse or other extreme
working conditions. Some female domestic servants who ran away from their employers
due to abuse or poor working conditions were recruited or kidnapped into
prostitution. KUWAIT - Nearly 2,000 women domestic
workers every year since the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 have fled the homes
of abusive employers. These women are mainly from Sri Lanka, the Philippines,
Bangladesh, and India. They report patterns of rape and physical assault,
with debt bondage and illegal confinement being common. Kuwait has long
depended on foreign workers to be the backbone on its labor. Unfortunately,
Kuwait's law excludes domestic workers from their labor law protections. The
maids' exclusion from the labor law creates isolation and denies them even
minimal protection against unfair practices. Because of the isolation and the
stigma of sexual assault, most domestic workers face many obstacles and are
deterred from reporting employer abuse to the authorities. IFWEA Journal - December 2000 - Campaigning against Bonded
Labour www.ifwea.org/journal/1200/campaigning_against_bonded_labour.html MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS
- The experience
of Alice illustrates how many are tricked into debt bondage. Recruited from
Manila for work in Kuwait, Alice was eventually taken by her employers to
work for them in London. Despite Alice’s qualification as a
civil engineer in Manila, the pay was not enough to support her and her
family. She answered an advert
recruiting engineers to Kuwait offering 215 Pounds per month -- six times her
Philippine salary. Against her
expected salary her family borrowed money so she could pay the agency's fee,
half of which was due before leaving Manila.
Upon arriving in Kuwait City she found that there were no civil
engineering posts, only jobs for maids at a salary considerably less than she
was promised. With no money to pay the
agency or to pay for the flight back home, she had no choice but to sign a
contract to work as a domestic. Her day began at 5:30am and only
ended once all of the adults had gone to bed, which was regularly after
2am. She had no time off, not even to
go to church or to write letters home. After two and a half years in
Kuwait Alice was taken to London.
Following an attack in which her employer tried to rape her she fled. It
was the first time she had been out of the house. WHAT DOES RACE HAVE TO DO WITH IT?
- It is true that in some countries there are ethnic or religious
differences between slaves and slaveholders. In Pakistan, for example, many
enslave brickmakers are Christians while the
slaveholders are Muslim. In India slave and slaveholder may be from different
castes. In Thailand they may come from different regions of the country and
are much more likely to be women. But in Pakistan there are Christians who
are not slaves, in India members of the same caste who are free. Their caste
or religion simply reflects their vulnerability to enslavement; it doesn't
cause it. Only in one country, Mauritania, does the racism of the old slavery
persist -- there black slaves are held by Arab slaveholders, and race is a
key division. To be sure, some cultures are more divided along racial lines
than others. Japanese culture strongly distinguishes the Japanese as different
from everyone else, and so enslaved prostitutes in Japan are more likely to
be Thai, Philippine, or European women -- although they may be Japanese. Even
here, the key difference is not racial but economic: Japanese women are not
nearly so vulnerable and desperate as Thais or Filipinas. And the Thai women
are available for shipment to Japan because Thais are enslaving Thais. The same pattern occurs in the oil-rich
states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, where Muslim Arabs promiscuously
enslave Sri Lankan Hindus, Filipino Christians, and Nigerian Muslims. The
common denominator is poverty, not color. Behind every assertion of ethnic
difference is the reality of economic disparity. A
death sentence for a young Filipino maid highlights the problem of abuse of
Asian servants Despite the settlement, the case cast
a spotlight on a dark practice throughout the Arabian peninsula: an almost
medieval system of servitude that each year turns thousands of young women
from underdeveloped Asian countries into virtual slaves for prosperous Arab
families. The women are frequently lured to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the
lesser emirates and sultanates by shady "employment agents" who
offer them attractive-sounding jobs at relatively high pay. Once there, they
learn that much of the money they initially earn--the going rate is $100 to
$150 a month--goes to pay for their airfare and the employment agent's fee. Worse, the maids find themselves
in virtual bondage to their employers, who almost without exception
confiscate the servants' passports to prevent them from walking out before
fulfilling their typical two-year contract. It is common for the maids to be
forced to work from dawn to midnight, seven days a week. Often they are fed
scraps and leftovers, are beaten and verbally abused and, in the worst cases,
raped and murdered. Only in the most egregious instances is an employer ever
charged with sexual abuse or assault. The
Overthrow Of The American Republic - Part 30 Point by point, I discussed the
findings of a unit of the United Nations which had documented a terrible
truth. Here it was, late in the 20th Century, I told the crowd, that Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait, according to undisputed details of the U.N. unit, each had
huge numbers of BLACK CHATTEL SLAVES. Saudi, according to the findings, had
about one hundred thousand such slaves and Kuwait about fifty thousand of the
same. UAE : HORRENDOUS RECORD OF CHILD SLAVERY - WORK WORRIES - Sri Lankan women are trafficked to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar, mainly as sex workers or for forced labor. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Kuwait Street Children in [Kuwait] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Kuwait] [other countries]