There has been much talk on Tyneside and elsewhere since 2021 about human rights in Saudi Arabia, following the takeover of Newcastle United by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. It has been highlighted that the Saudi regime have been responsible for a large range of human rights abuses, which have continued since the takeover at St James’ Park, including the torture of children, the execution of many people after unfair trials , the imprisonment of people for decades for simply expressing their opinions peacefully on Twitter or X and a guardian system, which means that women in Saudi Arabia have to have a male guardian, who makes all the important decisions in their lives.
What is not as well-known perhaps is the kafala system in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, which regulates the immigration of the huge numbers of migrant workers, who come into the region, especially from the Indian sub-continent, looking to escape dreadful, grinding poverty at home.
What is the kafala system?
The kafala system is used in a number of countries in the Middle East with regards to the huge influx of migrant workers in recent decades as oil money has meant that Gulf states have been able to engage in an enormous amount of new construction work. However, it has become very controversial. Indeed, it is noted by the Council on Foreign Relations that, “the kafala system regulates the lives of tens of millions of migrant labourers in the Middle East, but growing outrage over human rights abuses, racism, and gender discrimination has fuelled calls for reform.”
For decades now the kafala system has acted as a legal framework to regulate the use of migrant workers in all the Gulf states , except Iraq, and also in Jordan and Lebanon. It was established to ensure a plentiful supply of cheap labour in those countries and its defenders argue that it has driven development and benefited local businesses. However, there is also a downside, as there is growing evidence that the system is rife with exploitation and, as mentioned earlier, it has become increasingly controversial.
Have reforms made a difference?
With regards to Saudi Arabia, there were reforms to the kafala system established in 2021, but critics claim that these have not gone nearly far enough to end the exploitation and abuse associated with the system. Indeed in March 2021, Human Rights Watch noted that Saudi Arabia had introduced labour reforms that month that would ease restrictions and allow some migrant workers to change jobs without employer consent under certain narrow circumstances.
However, Human Rights Watch went on to say that the reforms did not go far enough to dismantle what was described as “the abusive kafala (visa sponsorship) system”. It was also noted that they excluded migrant workers not covered by the labour law, who were among the least protected and most vulnerable to abuse. These included domestic workers and farmers and while the new laws allowed migrant workers to request an exit permit without the employer’s permission for the first time, they still did not abolish the exit permit, which violates human rights.
Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch commented that, “Saudi Arabia has one of the most abusive versions of the kafala system in the region, and the reforms are limited, problematic, and by no means dismantle the kafala system. Millions of domestic workers and other workers are excluded from these reforms, leaving them entirely at their employers’ mercy.”
The following month, in April 2021 Amnesty International reported that at least 41 Sri Lankan women, the majority of whom were said to be migrant domestic workers, had spent months on end arbitrarily detained at a deportation centre in Saudi Arabia, awaiting repatriation to their home country. It was further reported that the women had been held at a Deportation Detention (Tarheel) Centre in Riyadh for periods ranging from eight to 18 months and that at least three of them had young children detained with them, with one woman in urgent need of medical care and treatment which she was not receiving.
Amnesty International went on to say: “their plight is a stark illustration of how domestic workers remain caught up in the inherently abusive kafala (sponsorship) system. In March 2021 Saudi Arabia brought in reforms to its kafala system, however these reforms excluded migrant domestic workers who make up 30% of the country’s 10 million migrant workers.”
Amnesty International report 2023
In its report on Saudi Arabia for 2023, Amnesty International reported that the regime had continued with their crackdown on individuals accused of violating residency, border and labour regulations, including through arbitrary arrests and deportations of foreign nationals solely due to their irregular immigration status.
It was said that, according to the Ministry of Interior, between January and December, at least 468,000 foreign nationals had been returned to their home country out of over 777,000 arrested for “violating labour, residency and border security” regulations. It was further noted that in the same period, over 40,000 foreign nationals, most of them Ethiopian and Yemeni nationals, had been arrested for crossing the border irregularly from Yemen into Saudi Arabia.
It was also noted with regards to Amazon that, “dozens of Nepali migrant workers contracted to work in Amazon warehouses were subjected to serious human rights abuses, including treatment that may amount to human trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation. The workers were deceived by recruitment agencies in Saudi Arabia about the nature of their employer and the terms and conditions of their jobs before leaving their home country. Additionally, they had their wages withheld by third-party contractors and were housed in wholly inadequate accommodation. Some were verbally or physically abused or threatened with such abuse, particularly when they raised complaints about their living and working conditions. Once these workers were terminated from deployment with Amazon, third-party contractors often failed to find them alternative jobs and stopped paying them their contractual wage when they were rendered “jobless”. Contractors also provided these workers with limited or no support and failed to give them the required documents to allow them to change jobs or leave the country, thereby restricting their freedom of movement and job mobility.”
Furthermore, Amnesty noted that, during 2023, Saudi border guards had killed Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who had been trying to enter Saudi Arabia across the border with Yemen. It was also noted by Amnesty International that, Human Rights Watch had also documented how the guards had used explosive weapons against the migrants and shot some at close range, including children. Consequently, the deaths of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia had been counted in at least the hundreds, between March 2022 and June 2023.
Exploitation and abuse
This year, a report in a major national newspaper has suggested that the kafala system is still very much open to abuse and exploitation with devastating consequences. In April 2024 the Guardian published research amassed over a period of two years into the kafala system across the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia. In summary the piece noted that the kafala system has been, “denounced as giving a ‘veneer of legality to slaveholding’ and despite claims of reform, kafala laws persist, allowing bosses to abuse women, who vanish from society.”
Additionally, it was reported that in response to the Guardian’s research, Felipe González Morales, former UN special rapporteur on migrants’ rights, had stated that there were, ““grave violations of the human rights of migrant female domestic workers” where the kafala system was in force. The mandate of the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants has called on states to abolish the kafala system, which is a key factor for abuses and impunity, as employers operate as a sort of intermediary of the state, placing female domestic migrant workers in a situation of special vulnerability.”
Also responding to the Guardian’s research, François Crépeau, also a former UN special rapporteur, was reported as saying that the labour system is used to extract maximum work for minimum cost adding that, “the kafala system was transformed into the very oppressive mechanism that we know when those countries struck oil and suddenly became extremely rich and had lots of people to work for them. Before oil, they did not have all these people working for them, or the concentration of wealth.”
Another expert on the kafala system, Bernard Freamon, a US law professor and human trafficking expert, noted that kafala gives a “veneer of legality to slaveholding. The kafala system facilitates slavery because it keeps people from having any rights. It keeps them under an absolute regime of control.
“It enables the citizens of the country to have huge amounts of leisure and not do serious work. It creates a caste system, where mostly brown, dark-skinned people are running the society in terms of labour but not getting any benefit.”
Additionally, it was noted in the Guardian article that some Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, had announced reforms to the kafala system, but also noted that Rothna Begum, at Human Rights Watch, had said that, “across the Gulf, the reforms are slowly moving. For instance, Oman has not reformed its kafala system at all. Saudi Arabia’s is minimal – they’ve been much better at announcing them as if they’re large reforms, but they’re not.”
So, there we have a window into the kafala system used across the Gulf states, including in Saudi Arabia. The general consensus seems to be that while countries such as Saudi Arabia have loudly trumpeted reforms in what some might view as a quite racist system, the reality has been that the inherently brutal system is continuing pretty much as before. One would think that human dignity is worth more than for just somebody to be used and abused as little more than a slave.
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