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Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the early years of the 21st Century gvnet.com/humantrafficking/Kuwait.htm
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 *** Forced Labor and Debt Bondage Human Rights Watch Global Report on Women's
Human Rights, 1995 www.webster.edu/~woolflm/forcedlabor.html [accessed 17 February 2011] [scroll down] ***
ARCHIVES *** Human Rights Reports
» 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61692.htm [accessed 17 February 2011] 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. Human Rights
Reports » 2003 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27931.htm [accessed 17 February 2011] WOMEN - There were some
reports of women, mainly from Concluding Observations of the Committee on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights UN COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND
CULTURAL RIGHTS CESCR, Thirty-second session, 26 April-14 May 2004 –
Distributed 7 June 2004 www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/%28Symbol%29/E.C.12.1.Add.98.En [accessed 29 August 2011] [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 kuwaitnepalnews.wordpress.com/kuwait-crime-news/ [accessed 17 February 2011] [scroll down] 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 Mark P. Lagon,
Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Remarks at the
Freedom House-SAIS "Human Trafficking and Freedom" Event, At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7 September 2011] In many countries
in the Xinhua www.twocircles.net/2007jun27/kuwait_lashes_u_s_human_rights_report.html [accessed 17 February 2011] 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. Human trafficking www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=OTY4NzI4NjQw [accessed 28 November 2010] 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 Patrick Mathangani,
The Standard, May 11, 2007 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7 September 2011] 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 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/kuwait [accessed 26 June 2012] Human Rights
Overview Human Rights Watch www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/kuwait [accessed 17 February 2011] Library of Congress Call Number DS247.A13
P47 1994 lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/kwtoc.html [accessed 17 February 2011] Two sides of women's oppression Sara Flounders, Workers World newspaper,
March 11, 2004 www.workers.org/ww/2004/women0311.php [accessed 17 February 2011] 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 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 7 September 2011] The Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International is the only
human rights organisation working since last
several years practically against slave labour in Slavery
of Children and women in Morteza Aminmansour,
Persian Journal, Jun 20, 2004 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7 September 2011] 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 Forced Labor and Debt Bondage Human Rights Watch Global Report on Women's
Human Rights, 1995 www.webster.edu/~woolflm/forcedlabor.html [accessed 17 February 2011] [scroll down] Campaigning against Bonded Labour International Federation of Workers'
Education Associations IFWEA Journal, December 2000 At one time this article had been archived
and may possibly still be accessible [here]
[accessed 7 September 2011] MIGRANT DOMESTIC
WORKERS - The experience of 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. The New Slavery Kevin Bales, "Disposable People: New
Slavery in the Global Economy" [accessed 17 February 2011] 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 Michael S. Serrill,
Reported by Scott MacLeod/Al-Ain and Nelly Sindayen/Manila, TIME, October 23, 1995 housemaidsabuse.blogspot.com/2011/05/death-sentence-for-young-filipino-maid.html [accessed 17 February 2011] Despite the
settlement, the case cast a spotlight on a dark practice throughout the 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 www.rense.com/general35/skolov30.htm [accessed 17 February 2011] 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. Work Worries - Women going abroad to work
is leading to more human trafficking Lanka Business Online, 04 Mar 2005 www.lankabusinessonline.com/fullstory.php?nid=1777048731 [accessed 17 February 2011] Sri Lankan women
are trafficked to All
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Prof. Martin, "Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - |
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Torture in [Kuwait] [other countries]Human Trafficking in [Kuwait Street Children in [Kuwait] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Kuwait] [other countries]