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.
Showing posts with label Recruitment Agencies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recruitment Agencies. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Sources of Human Trafficking: Tracing Back to the Source
It is too easy for anti-trafficking advocates to attribute blame to host countries after victims of trafficking step forward and reveal the crime that has been committed against them. Of course, it is clear that facilitators of this crime do operate in countries that continue to request labor, and too often they are held unaccountable for their crimes due to the fact that they are citizens of those countries and protected by biased laws. However, attention should also be drawn to what we refer to as "source" countries and the recruitment agencies that are responsible for hiring migrant and domestic workers under false and coercive contracts and directly contribute to a cycle that has resulted in the modern-day enslavement of 27 million men, women and children throughout the world.
Tracing the problem back to its source:
The financial cut that these agencies make parallels with the number of heads they can process and provide to needy companies (phony or not) thousands of miles away, limiting any accountability and their direct involvement almost by default, and results in a certain dollar/rupee/dinar prize. Individuals from countries sprawling across South and Southeast Asia
often come from poor, rural communities, are uneducated, and seek out the myths of prosperity and foreseeable remittances for their families that are highlighted by despicable staff members working in local recruitment agencies. As a result of their limited eduction and the justifiable, but undeserved trust they place in their fellow countrymen, migrant and domestic workers are easily manipulated into contracts that offer few details of the type of employment to which they are assigned.
Information pertaining to accommodations, rights to travel, vacation periods, salaries and the rights (or lack of) they are guaranteed under local law can be falsified or may even be unavailable and deferred to the host country's employer or sponsor to divulge upon arrival in-country. Sometimes these contracts are not even available in the worker's own language, and more often than not, the worker is not even able to read. Recruitment agencies are the source for victims of sex trafficking, and the trafficking of underage children, given their ability to either falsify official documents like passports or birth certificates, or promise employment for women or children in legitimate companies that do not really exist - forcing them into the sex industry.
Efforts to regulate the activities of recruitment agencies are being exerted by countries like India, but they lack the funding and means to provide adequate protections to the thousands of workers looking to create a livelihood overseas each year. Similarly, initiatives like orientations for newly arrived workers and workshops providing information on their legal rights and local labor law are being led by some of the Gulf countries. These orientations are essential to providing much needed information to vulnerable and naive workers expecting new opportunities, rather than the nightmare that many actually face.
Tracing the problem back to its source:
The financial cut that these agencies make parallels with the number of heads they can process and provide to needy companies (phony or not) thousands of miles away, limiting any accountability and their direct involvement almost by default, and results in a certain dollar/rupee/dinar prize. Individuals from countries sprawling across South and Southeast Asia
often come from poor, rural communities, are uneducated, and seek out the myths of prosperity and foreseeable remittances for their families that are highlighted by despicable staff members working in local recruitment agencies. As a result of their limited eduction and the justifiable, but undeserved trust they place in their fellow countrymen, migrant and domestic workers are easily manipulated into contracts that offer few details of the type of employment to which they are assigned.Information pertaining to accommodations, rights to travel, vacation periods, salaries and the rights (or lack of) they are guaranteed under local law can be falsified or may even be unavailable and deferred to the host country's employer or sponsor to divulge upon arrival in-country. Sometimes these contracts are not even available in the worker's own language, and more often than not, the worker is not even able to read. Recruitment agencies are the source for victims of sex trafficking, and the trafficking of underage children, given their ability to either falsify official documents like passports or birth certificates, or promise employment for women or children in legitimate companies that do not really exist - forcing them into the sex industry.
Efforts to regulate the activities of recruitment agencies are being exerted by countries like India, but they lack the funding and means to provide adequate protections to the thousands of workers looking to create a livelihood overseas each year. Similarly, initiatives like orientations for newly arrived workers and workshops providing information on their legal rights and local labor law are being led by some of the Gulf countries. These orientations are essential to providing much needed information to vulnerable and naive workers expecting new opportunities, rather than the nightmare that many actually face.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Embassy of Bangladesh Hosts Review of New Labor Laws
Gulf Daily News » Local News » Expat labour issues are reviewed
Interesting article this week from the Gulf Daily News that shows how the Bangladeshi Embassy is trying to educate its citizens on the new labor laws that have been implemented in Bahrain in recent months. Several accounts from migrant laborers present in this article elaborate further on the common forms of mistreatment and coercive recruitment that Bangladeshis face, providing better insight to the reader on how to better foresee risks for human trafficking at its source. In an effort to pass on updated information on Bahrain's promulgating labor law and procedures and guidelines of the Labor Market Regulatory Authority, the Embassy of Bangladesh hosted one of a series of planned open houses for its citizens in Bahrain's capital.
Common complaints from these laborers were the following:
-Withheld salaries as a way to prevent the worker from changing employers or simply because the employer chooses not to pay;
-Cancelled visas that often leave the workers stranded and in debt; and
-Inaccurate job placement information from recruitment agencies in Bangladesh.
The population of Bangladeshi workers living in Bahrain has diminished considerably nearly two years after Bahraini demands to terminate the issue of work visas to Bangladeshis, following two murders of Bahraini citizens at the hands of Bangladeshi migrant workers.
Interesting article this week from the Gulf Daily News that shows how the Bangladeshi Embassy is trying to educate its citizens on the new labor laws that have been implemented in Bahrain in recent months. Several accounts from migrant laborers present in this article elaborate further on the common forms of mistreatment and coercive recruitment that Bangladeshis face, providing better insight to the reader on how to better foresee risks for human trafficking at its source. In an effort to pass on updated information on Bahrain's promulgating labor law and procedures and guidelines of the Labor Market Regulatory Authority, the Embassy of Bangladesh hosted one of a series of planned open houses for its citizens in Bahrain's capital.
Common complaints from these laborers were the following:
-Withheld salaries as a way to prevent the worker from changing employers or simply because the employer chooses not to pay;
-Cancelled visas that often leave the workers stranded and in debt; and
-Inaccurate job placement information from recruitment agencies in Bangladesh.
The population of Bangladeshi workers living in Bahrain has diminished considerably nearly two years after Bahraini demands to terminate the issue of work visas to Bangladeshis, following two murders of Bahraini citizens at the hands of Bangladeshi migrant workers.
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