Kafala system

The Kafala system (sometimes spelled Kefala) is a structure which lays out the relationship between migrant workers and their employers in host countries. It is primarily used in nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC. It has been in place since the 1950s.

The framework defines the binding relationship between the migrant employee and their employer.^[1] Workers have a sponsor, often their employer, who is in control of their residency within the host nation. Mainly, it is used in the GCC, as well as some of the neighbouring countries. The main nations where it takes place are Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The Kafala system has come into criticism for allowing poor treatment of migrant workers. It allows for a system of unequal legal rights to be kept. In particular, migrant domestic workers suffer as they are given no legal protections. Some have claimed it is similar to modern day slavery. In the 21st Century, there have been some reforms to the Kafala system, seen in nations such as Bahrain and Qatar.

The Kafala system allows employers within a host nation to employ workers from other nations, otherwise referred to as migrant workers.^[2] This provides the migrant worker residence and employment in a host country, although it is tied to their employer or sponsor.^[3]

The system does not allow migrants to stay permanently, instead they are permitted to work in the host nation for a short period of time, usually around two to three years.^[4]

There is a lot of migration into countries that use the Kafala system, especially the GCC. Most nations in the GCC have a migrant population which is higher than those native to the country.^[5] Overall, in 2020, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs said that the GCC contained over 30 million migrants.^[6] Migrant workers make up a majority percentage of the workforce. Across the entire GCC, 70% of the regional labour market was made up of migrants.^[7]

High migration levels have led to arguments that it is necessary to keep the unequal legal status for migrant workers. The United Arab Emirates claims the inequality helps preserve the state's national identity and also maintain a stable society.^[8]

Migrant domestic workers are an informal sector of the Kafala system. This means they do not have any outright legal protections in host nations.^[9]

Of all of migrants in the GCC, in 2021 around 3.1 million were found to be domestic workers.^[10] The largest number of domestic workers are found in Saudi Arabia, with nearly one million working there.^[10]

The term Kafala originates from Classical Arabic, and refers to the relationship between the Kafeel, who is a person in a position of authority, with the makfūl, who is the vulnerable employee.^[11]

In theory, the Kafeel is to take legal responsibility for the makfūl, without benefitting from the relationship through exploitative means. This means that the relationship was created with the intentions of the protection of the employee by their employer.

In the 1930s, oil was found in the Arabian shore. There was a lack of manual labour to deal with this discovery.^[12] Since then, there has been a steady increase of migrant workers in the area. From the 1960s, the number of migrants has increased steadily. A large amount of migrants into the area have historically been from South Asia and Southeast Asia.^[13]

The Kafala system has come under criticism internationally. Most of this stems from the poor conditions which migrant workers live through.

Some critics have said the system is similar to slavery. The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, claimed this in 2010.^[14] The International Labour Organisation has also claimed that the system may invite forced labour.^[15]

In particular, the rights migrant domestic workers is a cause for concern. This is due to the fact that they do not have any legal protections under the Kafala system.^[9]

The conditions of workers in the Kafala system are seen as poor. The living conditions of workers are usually unhealthy. They are forced to live in overcrowded and unhygienic living conditions.^[16] Often, little is done to deal with the extreme heat of the region. The most common cause of death in young men is cardiac arrest due to the heat.^[17]

The worker's permission to be within a country is controlled by the host who is able to fire and deport them at will.^[10] Fear of deportation means workers often stay in poor working conditions.

Workers cannot leave the country without approval from their employer. Many employers take away their passports upon arrival, even though this is illegal in most host countries.^[17] Leaving work is seen as a crime. This can be punished by imprisonment or deportation. This applies even to cases where workers are unhappy or abused at work.^[10]

Female domestic workers face specific challenges under the system in Lebanon and Kuwait. Under the interviews conducted by Walk Free, an international human rights group, these women come from countries including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, the Philippines, and Sierra Leone.^[18] Violence based on their gender is noticeable within their employers house, where they are forced to work. This violence includes limited movement from within their place of employment and the use of cameras to maintain control over these women. This represents a double challenge for these women, who are subject to exploitation based off their gender and their contract under the Kafala system.^[18]

Attempts of these women to physically escape will often lead to their arrest by the police and forced return to their sponsor. These women tend not to seek help from the police because they often take the side of the employer, rather than the foreign worker.^[19]

Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup in 2010. This was the first time a Middle Eastern nation had hosted the competition.^[20] In order to host the competition many new stadiums had to be built. Many of the people involved in building these were migrant labourers from the Kafala system. Of Qatar's workforce, 95% are migrant workers working in construction or domestic work.^[21]

Journalists claimed that many construction workers had lost their lives building these stadiums. In 2021, UK newspaper The Guardian revealed that 6,500 people had died in relation to World Cup construction since 2010.^[22] This is a number disputed by Qatari officials. The Secretary General of Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, Hassan al-Thawadi, admitted that between 400 and 500 migrant workers died from any construction related to the World Cup.^[23]

Bahrain is one of the states that has gone furthest in reforming the Kafala system. In 2009, officials announced that they would dismantle the system. The Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) was established. This would now be in charge of sponsoring migrant workers instead of private employers.^[24]

Some amendments have been made which allow foreign workers to move from one employer to another without the consent from their first employer.^[19] In theory, these changes make the worker less vulnerable or bound by a specific contract.

However, there have been criticisms of Bahrain's claims to have abolished the system. Some critics say that it is the same system as before, with the rules not properly being changed.^[25]

Qatar was the first nation to allow migrant workers to change their job without getting consent from their employer beforehand.^[26] This was prompted by the fact that the total population of migrants in Qatar is four times more than the total population of nationals, creating a general fear to the country's national security.^[19]

The Kafala system forms the basis of the bad treatment of migrant workers in Lebanon. Through this system, foreign people that want to become a domestic worker in Lebanon need a sponsor (kafeel) to come to the country. Sponsors are found with help from an agency. The agency is a company that connects workers and employers and gets paid for it. After the contract is worked out, the migrants will fly over from their home country to Lebanon. When they arrive, migrants are often illegally asked to hand over their passport and other important documents to their sponsor. Because of this, the sponsor gets almost total control over what the worker can do and where they can go. The migrant worker fulfills tasks in and around the house to support the sponsor in return for a salary between $100 and $400.^[27] This payment is mostly sent back as a remittance to the home country to support other family members.^[28]

Because of how the Kafala system works, migrant workers are at a big disadvantage when problems or disagreements happen. This is because the law says a migrant can only stay in the country if they have a contract with a sponsor. This means the rights a migrant in Lebanon have are completely dependent on their employer.^[29] As soon as the employer or the employee ends the contract, the migrant is forced to leave the country. This disadvantage can lead to very heartbreaking cases. Migrant workers have shared many serious problems they face: being beaten, locked inside homes, not allowed to speak with their families, paid late or not at all, not given enough food, and being physically or mentally abused, and are often not allowed enough rest. When a migrant worker doesn't fulfil the wants and needs of their sponsor, their sponsor can break the contract. When this happens, the worker can be arrested and deported. This can even happen if the migrant worker is working according to the rules of the contract. Because of this uneven situation, migrant workers are often taken advantage of.^[30]

In response to being mistreated under the Kafala system, migrants have tried to get together and organize. First they organized in communities based on their shared home countries to strengthen their bonds. Then, the migrants wanted to organize themselves in a political form: a trade union. The government stopped them from doing this because the minister of labour believed that starting this trade union was illegal and illegitimate ^[31][32]

• In January 2017, Kidist, a migrant worker, went to jail, because she was accused of stealing, while her employer misused her for sex.^[33]
• In April 2020, a Lebanon man tried to sell a migrant worker in a Facebook group. He asked $1000 for the woman.^[34]
• In 2020, multiple employers dumped their Ethiopian domestic migrant workers at the Ethiopian embassy. They could not pay the salary anymore because of the COVID-19 Crisis.^[35]

Lebanon has received a lot of international criticism on its Kafala system because of the many abuses that migrant workers caught up in it face.The fact that Lebanon has let things continue as they are under the Kafala system has also received negative comments from international organizations. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have written reports about the bad conditions that migrant workers face at work. Human Rights Watch says that when migrant workers run away or take their sponsor to court because of problems, the court takes a long time to make a decision. Also, the Lebanese legal system does not see it as a problem when employers keep the worker’s passport. But when a sponsor accuses a migrant worker of breaking the law, the worker is arrested much faster, even if they are later found not guilty. Migrant domestic workers face the same problem if they go to the police. The police usually do not help migrant workers with their problems or support them in dealing with their sponsors.^[36]

Amnesty International also commented on the bad working and living conditions. They talked about the problems with the agencies that help sponsors find workers. These agencies often do illegal things, like asking for more money than they are allowed to. One person from a recruitment agency told Amnesty International that they see workers as commodities, meaning they see them as things or objects, rather than human beings. This person also said that the fees go up even more when there is a hiring ban. Seeing workers as commodities leads to another problem: people start to think that workers can easily be replaced, like objects or tools.^[37][38]

As a result of the bad conditions that migrant workers face in Lebanon, multiple countries (Including Ethiopia,^[39] Nepal^[40] and the Philippines) have forbidden their people to workin Lebanon until the labour issues are solved. As a result, it is more difficult to get migrant workers from these countries as they have to be brought in illegally. This has led to an increase in prices and fees for the agency firms that recruit the migrants.^[27]

The Lebanese government is not good at dealing with abuse and unfair treatment of its migrant domestic workers. The requirements to start searching for a migrant worker are also too low, only a deposit of around 1000 dollars is needed. The deposit is needed to pay for the return ticket if the migrant worker would go home. Illegal migrants are also still active in the country even though they should be deported out of the country if they do not have a sponsor anymore. Illegal migrants are at even higher risk as they can not be traced because of their illegal status. In order to provide migrant workers with information about their rights in Lebanon, the Lebanese government published an information guide.^[41]

• Gulf Cooperation Council
• Forced labor
• Migrant worker
• Economic migration
• 2022 FIFA World Cup