HRW Commends Bahrain's Sponsorship Reforms but Highlights Shortcomings for Domestic Workers

To elaborate further on an early post found in this blog, Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently released a report highlighting the slow reforms that are taking place in the labor sectors of several source and destination countries for human trafficking, including Bahrain. Despite several shortcomings in the country, Bahrain was commended for its unprecedented reforms to the Kafala Sponsorship System, which for the first time in the region, awards migrant workers the rights to switch sponsors without consent, and in the absence of unpaid wages, or allegations of abuse.

Bahrain's Minister of Labor has justified Bahrain's interest in reform by linking the sponsorship system with modern-day slavery.

Although the new system of sponsorship still offers loopholes for coercion by exploitive employers, it offers a jumping-off point for further development in the future.

HRW plans to forward recommendations directly to the Bahraini Government to address its inaction on domestic worker issues, and notes that all of the governments in this particular report fell short of providing minimum protections to prevent abuse of domestic workers. The report addressed shortcomings pertaining to domestic workers' lack of protection under national labor laws, regulation of immigration and monitoring of recruitment agency absconding, effective responses by police and courts following allegations of physical or sexual abuse, and involvement by civil society actors and labor unions.

Other key recommendations encouraged regional governments to award domestic workers the rights to freedom of association to highlight common grievances and offer a forum for improvements, as well as, approval for legal status of migrant and domestic workers involved in court proceedings. Currently, domestic workers who present allegations of abuse to police undertake an illegal immigration status by default, deterring many from reporting crimes committed against them and resulting in immediate deportation.

Finally, Justice and Islamic Affairs Ministries were encouraged to provide increased services for survivors of abuse, to establish better parameters for identifying cases of human trafficking from forced domestic servitude, and to prevent, investigate, and prosecute criminal violence against domestic workers.