Project Overview/Background Information

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post, of my first blog, of my first experiences in Bahrain. I arrived in-country exactly one month ago and have already gained some amazing insights into the people, the culture, the history, and my project at hand researching the treatment of migrant workers and human trafficking in Bahrain and neighboring countries. My research throughout the eight months that i will be spending in Bahrain aims to provide a holistic analysis of labor migration within the island kingdom, first by compiling research data available to the public from media, human rights groups, labor advocates, and government reports operating locally and regionally. Many of these sources have established firm leads to like-minded individuals and useful contacts that i plan to inter-face with in coming months. The goal is to produce a document that will outline in fine detail, contemporary conditions in Bahrain and suggestions for improving them, specifically looking to economic, social, legal, religious, political, and historical sub-causes that have influenced Bahrain's labor force. In doing so, I intend to answer questions like: Is the government on the right track with its revamped labor laws? Has Bahrain adequately been able to address its need for labor in a responsible manner? How does Bahrain compare to its neighbors? I believe that a final product will be extremely beneficial to the academic community and will truly bring long-needed attention to the plight of migrant and domestic workers suffered in Bahrain and the greater Persian Gulf.

I have already completed a preliminary scan of internet-based sources over the past month and have established some useful international contacts who have been extremely open to share their resources and answer my questions. I intend to provide the outcomes of my conversations with contacts following my meetings and/or dialogue with them.

Locally, I have reached-out to Bahrain's formidable, sole migrant rights advocacy organization, The Migrant Workers' Protection Society (MWPS) for a brief overview of current misconceptions of the prevention, protection, and persecution of human trafficking and its perpetrators. I was present for a meeting discussing the much-needed edits to the US Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) to be released in June 2010, given the feedback of the MWPS reps.

Annually, the United States' Department of State publishes the TIP report that categorizes every nation in the world on a scale of 1-3 (3 being the most critical rating) after assessing the three criteria above and actions taken to combat human trafficking. For 2009, Bahrain was placed on the Tier 2 Watch List, labeling it as

A country whose government does not fully comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards but is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with those standards AND:
a) The absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is
significantly increasing; or
b) There is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year; or
c) The determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year.

Although an improvement from a Tier 3 rating in 2008, Bahrain is still on the cusp when it comes to addressing human trafficking, and as a result there have been some significant responses by the Bahraini government, mostly with regard to its Labor Law and the commonplace "Kafala" sponsorship system found across the Persian Gulf. Look for a post explaining this system in further detail soon, and another giving an evolution of Bahraini labor law.