The International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s Forced Labour Convention No. 29 states that forced or compulsory labour is all work or service which is extracted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily, where work is forced upon people by State authorities, by private enterprises or by individuals.
According to the Cambridge University Press, forced labour and/or exploitation of workers may include abuse of vulnerability, retention of identity documents, intimidation and threats, restriction of movement, physical and sexual violence, abusive working and living conditions and excessive overtime. And yet, this is just a fraction of what it actually entails.
The ILO estimates in that in 2012, 14.2 million people are exploited for labour in industries such as construction, domestic work, manufacturing and agriculture, and that 600,000 are in the Middle East.
On the 2nd of December 2010, Qatar was appointed as the host of the 2022 World Cup by FIFA. However, Qatar has faced strong criticism, with Amnesty International referring to “forced labour” and calling out the various human rights abuses of foreign workers involved, despite worker welfare standards being drafted in 2014.
Under Qatar’s sponsorship law known as Kafala, the sponsors have the full power to cancel the worker’s residency permits, deny worker’s ability to change jobs and even report a worker to the police as “absconded” and even deny permission to leave the country. This sponsorship system even though continues to drive economic growth, leaves workers vulnerable to abuse as they would be afraid to report abuses or claim their rights due to their movements being restricted.
Nevertheless, the constant efforts of labour rights groups and the civil society have resulted in significant reforms for migrant workers in Qatar in the past few years.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states under Article 23 that everyone has the right to work, the right to free choice of employment, the right to just and favourable conditions of work.
The UDHR being soft law, is highly influential in promoting human rights as it is considered the basis for international law, but the countries also have to agree to the articles which is where Qatar can use its state sovereignty to go against the UDHR and not adhere to it, making it ineffective in this case as they have omitted certain articles which they do not believe in.
Qatar has ratified the International Covenant on the Civil and Political Rights (the ICCPR) on the 21st of May 2018 along with the International Covenant on Economics, Social, and Cultural Rights (the ICESCR), and they came into force last August. Qatar holds the responsibility under Article 12 to provide for the freedom of movement in the ICCPR along with the right to prohibition of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and to freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. Under the ICESCR, Qatar has the responsibility to protect several more fundamental rights such as the right to work, the right to join trade unions and the right to an adequate standard of living among others.
However, the extent to which these conventions will enforce human rights are not extremely effective as Qatar’s accession to these conventions included both formal reservations on articles to which Qatar will not consider itself bound by, as well as statements by Qatar indicating how the government will interpret certain provisions, in accordance with Islamic Sharia law, the national constitution, and other national laws, reducing the extent to which these conventions can promote can enforce human rights, particularly in regard to the articles that relate to women’s and migrant workers’ rights.
The ILO is a specialised agency of the United Nations, bringing together governments, employers and workers of the 187 member States to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men. The ILO established eight key conventions throughout the 20th century to deal with exploitation of workers and to gain ratification from all member states.
The Forced Labour Convention 1930 (No. 29) and the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105) are two of the various ILO instruments in regard to forced labour and Qatar has signed 5 of the 8 conventions, having omitted to ratify the convention related to freedom of association (C087), freedom of collective bargaining (C098), and equal remuneration (C100).
This lessens the extent to which these conventions can enforce human rights as even though they promote human rights, the states can ratify having omitted certain articles which in turn does not enforce human rights to its best ability.
However, the concept of forced labour is quite broadly defined, thus covering a wide range of coercive labour practices, which occur in all types of economic activity and in all parts of the world, helping the state enforce against forced labour more efficiently. On the other hand, Article 2 of the Convention No. 29 describes five situations which constitutes exceptions to the “forced labour” definition under certain conditions, and these limit the extent to which these conventions can promote human rights.
Following the international scrutiny of the conditions of the workers’, Qatar is under intense pressure to improve the migrant worker rights and has passed new amendments and laws regarding this, with the last one passing early this year. Under the new law, employers will no longer have the power to deny exit permits to most of their workers, though they will retain this right for 5% of their workforce. This is the second step towards reform as in September 2015 another amendment was passed which lifted a requirement that foreign workers get permission from their employers to leave the country — a change labor rights groups had long campaigned for.
There now is a temporary monthly minimum wage of 750 riyals ($276) and also a committee to remove disputes.
Nevertheless, these changes will not affect the rights of workers who are not covered by Qatar’s labour law, such as the 174,000 domestic workers in Qatar, who are equally if not more vulnerable to be exploited. This shows how effective the different agencies and mechanisms were to bring reform into Qatar and help promote and especially enforce human rights, but also show how it takes time for laws to be passed, and the inequality faced by different workers in the same country.
Amnesty International is one of the non-government organisations who have played a significant role in bringing reform in Qatar, fighting for the rights of migrant workers. They have released various articles, journals, reports and research materials on this case, and has raised awareness of human rights concerns. They have also assisted in creating conventions that pressure governments to introduce tougher legislation or to ratify conventions that have been negotiated over many decades.
Amnesty is very effective in promoting human rights and pressuring the government to adhere to human rights conventions and to incorporate it into the domestic law, and by informing the public and the world about the issues going down in Qatar, they were able to make significant reform in the country.
Human Rights Watch is a United States based non-government organisation which monitors the integrity of various governments and their treatment of citizens. They, like Amnesty, have published various articles and research reports which have increased the public awareness of this issue, and helped promote human rights to an extent of which the government passed new legislation to help enforce these aforementioned human rights.
Being an independent, international organisation, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have been able to criticise the government and the country and help promote human rights and bring out the abuses happening in Qatar to the eyes of the world, investigating abuses, exposing the facts and pressuring those with power to respect rights and secure justice.
The International Trade Union Confederation is another agency whose mission is the promotion and defence of workers’ rights and interests, through international cooperation between trade unions, global campaigning and advocacy within the major global institutions.
In October 2017, they claimed to have secured the agreement of the government in Qatar to significantly improve the physical and employment situation of two million migrant workers, including ending the kafala system, and also stated that the agreement would positively affect the general situation of workers, especially of those who work on the 2022 FIFA World Cup infrastructure projects.
They have helped in promoting human rights as they have pressured the governments to make reasonable reforms to protect human rights, and have positively impacted the lives of migrant workers in Qatar due to the recent law reform due to the pressures by the public and the various different agencies.
Another very effective non-legal response is the media. The media has been from time and time been able to provide valuable insight into the inner workings of Qatar, and especially during the preparation for the 2022 World Cup, was able to provide the public with the facts and cover events as they unfolded, increasing awareness and promoting human rights by also influencing different organisations to step in and take action.
In 2015, a crew of four journalists from the BBC were arrested and held for two days after they attempted to report on the condition of workers in the country, and this created even more uproar in the international community as the media was able to portray the hidden nature of this issue, and also helped bring Qatar to the scrutiny of the international community. All this media coverage and awareness helped promote human rights to such an extent which at the end helped enforce human rights in Qatar, being one of the most effective responses to this issue.
However, according to Amnesty International, at an international level it is difficult to see rapid change and decline in the exploitation of workers, with the three key reasons for this being the lack of resources for government and non-government organisations, sociocultural factors, and state sovereignty.
Exploitation of workers remain widespread despite the governments’ best efforts to legislate against abuse, educate their citizens about equality and enforce a range of international conventions. Unfortunately, conventions, awards, negotiations and anti-discrimination legislation are not as pronounced or explicit as in Australia in many other countries.
In Qatar, the various non-regal responses that led to the legal responses do hep promote and enforce human rights regarding labour exploitation, however there’s still a long way left to go. With the new laws passed this year and Qatar still hosting the 2022 World Cup, it is agreed upon that the workers’ rights will be protected to a much more extent than before especially with the end to the kafala system, however it has not been eradicated completely, these are the small steps taken to compete against the harsh conditions in place.