...Or Does It Explode?

Ethiopia Bans Citizens From Working In “Abusive” Lebanon

Yeah, that's the headline.

Gulf States Pledge Action on Human Trafficking... Really?

Big words from Gulf States and even Mr. Qaradawi:

A conference in Qatar on human trafficking has urged Arab states to step up the fight against the scourge, seen as widespread in the pro-Western oil-rich Gulf region...

Five of the six GCC member states -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia -- are on a blacklist of countries trafficking in people. GCC countries, which also include the United Arab Emirates, are close allies of the United States.

International human rights groups have also highlighted the problem of human trafficking in the Gulf area, which hosts more than 13 million expatriates, many of them unskilled and low-paid Asian workers vulnerable to abuse.

Three other Arab countries -- Algeria, Sudan and Syria -- are on the list of worst offenders.

Qatar-based Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi told the conference human trafficking was banned under Islam. He slammed companies that bring in "migrant workers, give them a bare minimum of wages and pen them up like sheep" in crammed rooms as living quarters.

It's hard to see these wonderful declarations actually getting put into practice. Societies like Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE are based on population majority of migrant workers, many of them low-paid (if at all) domestic help. Oil revenues may be up, but not enough to stop the temptation of abusing legions of employees who have no legal recourse or civil rights...

Lip Service on Worker's Rights in the Gulf?

The Gulf Cooperation Council is pledging new efforts to prevent abuses against foreign "unskilled" workers, who incidentally comprise the majority of the population in most Gulf states:

Gulf Arab states heavily dependent on an Asian labour force agreed on Tuesday with labour-sending Asian countries to join forces against the exploitation of expat workers from Asia. Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) labour ministers and counterparts from Asia are to propose an action plan to protect the welfare of Asian workers, according to their Abu Dhabi Declaration.

The ministers have recommended the drawing up within three months of the plan aimed at “preventing illegal recruitment practices” both at the country of origin and in host countries. The declaration also called for “promoting welfare and protection measures for contractual workers ... and preventing their exploitation at origin and destination.” Emirati Labour Minister Ali al-Kaabi said at the start of the ministerial meeting on Tuesday that “guest workers must be afforded the security that they will receive the benefits that they are entitled to”...

“We have agreed that Asian workers are contracted workers, not what some call immigrant workers,” Kaabi told reporters at the end of the ministerial meeting, stressing that those workers stay in the GCC for a limited period.

“This would preserve the demographic nature of the countries of the region,” said Yousuf Abdulghani, the labour ministry assistant undersecretary on Monday. In October, Bahrain’s Labour Minister Majeed al-Alawi called for a six-year residency cap on foreign workers. But a GCC summit in December did not take up the proposal...

On Sunday, New York-based Human Right Watch urged the meeting in Abu Dhabi to adopt measures to halt “widespread violations” of the rights of Asian expatriate workers. Kaabi told the meeting on Tuesday that the United Arab Emirates, where thousands of Asian workers have gone on strikes over past months, has been working hard to improve conditions.

It's hard to believe this fundamentally abusive system will be seriously affected by yesterday's announcement.

Little-Noticed Protest against Saudi Execution

Buried under headlines about a new arms package for the Saudis is this story about a protest in Jakarta:

Tens of activists of non-governmental organization Migrant Care demonstrated outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy here on Monday in protest against the execution of Indonesian maid Yanti Irianti (35) in Saudi Arabia.

"Migrant Care condemns the execution and urges the Indonesian government to question the death sentence and the legal discrimination against the Indonesian domestic helper in Saudi Arabia," Executive Director of Migrant Care Anis Hidayah said.

Anis said that the Indonesian government could raise the case at the United Nations Human Rights Council, where Indonesia and Saudi Arabia were members.

Besides, the Indonesian government should also send a diplomatic note of protest to the Saudi government, recall its ambassador from Saudi Arabia and send the Saudi ambassador back to his country as a protest againt Yanti`s execution, Anis said.

The case surrounding Irianti - executed by firing squad on Friday - is unclear. The abuse of migrant workers by Saudi officials and citizens is crystal clear.

Two Disenfranchised Foreign Workers for Every Citizen

Remember the old Beach Boys classic, Surf City. It was a remarkable place, Brian Wilson sang to us, with "two girls for every boy!" For some young music fans, this was a first encounter with ratios. Anyway, the Emirates Economist has a recent post up - One Maid for Every Child - that suggests the ratios in Dubai City might be even more extreme than Surf City:

Gulf News

Five per cent of the population of the UAE are domestic workers, according to a new study by the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
...
Abu Dhabi: Mohammad Al Saeedi has four housemaids, one for each of his children.
...
Al Saeedi affirms the study's findings by saying, "I know countless families who have more maids than there are people in the house."
...
26-year-old Mohammad Al Ganabi says this idea has to change. "It is actually not healthy to the structure of the family to have these many housemaids.

Besides housemaids other there are other categories of domestic workers such as chauffeurs.

It is not only Emirati families that employ domestics. Many middle and upper class ex pat families employ live-in domestics as well. Still, 5% is substantial in a country where less than 30% of the population are citizens and most of the 70% ex pats are low wage workers.

Run the math on the figures in the last sentence and recall that none of these foreign workers enjoy any civil rights. Gotta love those ratios! How much longer can Emirati society accept this extraordinary imbalance?

First They Came for the Barbers, and I Stayed Silent...

Then they came for the girls on bicycles...

The crackdown continues:

Rents are soaring, inflation hovers around 17 percent, and 10 million Iranians live below the poverty line. The police said they shut 20 barbershops for men in Tehran last week because they offered inappropriate hairstyles, and women have been banned from riding bicycles in many places, as a crackdown on social freedoms presses on.

In Honor of Labor Day...

...a group of young camel jockeys resting in Abu Dhabi.

High Above Dubai

Friday Photo: Watching the (Disenfranchised Foreign) Workers in the UAE

Next They Came for the Labor Unions

It's getting hard to keep up:

Security officers on Wednesday closed the headquarters of the CTUWS, which offers legal aid to Egyptian factory workers, educates them as to their rights, and reports on labor-rights issues in the country. Police had closed two of the group's branch offices in recent weeks. The Ministry of Social Solidarity has blamed the CTUWS for inciting labor unrest around the country...

Plainclothes security officers had surrounded the CTUWS headquarters since April 23, 2007, when representatives of other Egyptian civil society groups had begun a sit-in there to express solidarity with the organization. According to human rights lawyer Gamal Eid, who was at the headquarters when the police shut down the offices, more than 200 policemen surrounded the CTUWS headquarters in the industrial Cairo suburb of Helwan on April 25, saying they had an order from the Ministry of Social Solidarity to close the organization. A representative of the Helwan local council cut power to the office...

The government's campaign against the organization comes amid widespread and continuing labor unrest in Egypt. According to media reports, there were more than 200 labor protests in Egypt during 2006. The largest was a public-sector textile workers' strike at a factory in al-Mahalla al-Kubra in December 2006. That strike came after the al-Mahalla office of the CTUWS helped inform textile workers of a prime ministerial decree that all public-sector textile workers should get higher year-end bonuses. Factory managers initially denied the decree had been issued. More than 20,000 workers eventually went on strike until the government offered them an increased bonus.