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Scrapping sponsorship (kafala) system to boost Arab economies
12-5-2017
A recent report published by the International Labor Organization (ILO) has shown that reforming the present sponsorship system, known as ‘kafala’, which regulates the temporary migration of laborers in the Middle East shall have significant benefits. These include, improved working conditions, enhanced meeting of the needs of employers and boosting the national economy as well as labor market productivity. The ILO report entitled, ‘Employer-Migrant worker Relationships in the Middle East: Exploring scope for internal labor market mobility and fair migration’, argues that visa sponsorship gives the sponsor (kafeel), as "owner" of the work and residence permit, significant power over the lives of non-national workers, an imbalance greater than what is seen in normal labor market situations. Accordingly, the report adds, this renders human rights violations a natural phenomenon, and more, a way of life enforced on migrant workers (particularly migrant women domestic workers, who become controlled by their employers in the finest details of their lives.) Violations start from undefined working hours in return for barely one-third of the minimum wage (by virtue of Lebanese law), the deprivation of their weekly day off, racist hate talk and physical, mental and sexual abuse, which in some cases build up to acts of murder). The ILO report went on to explain that sponsorship arrangements in the Middle East have been largely criticized due to the imbalanced employer-migrant worker relationship which could develop into a form of forced labor. It based its conclusion on observations of the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations on Forced Labor Convention, which define forced or compulsory labor as "any act or service exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the person does not voluntarily submit", that is to say, slavery. For the full report, please visit the following link: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---arabstates/---ro-beirut/documents/publication/wcms_552697.pdf
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Collective for Research and Training on Development - Action (CRTD.A)