Killing Kafala: Modern Slavery and Abolition in the Middle East

Migrant laborers at a construction site in Qatar. Photo courtesy of ILO/Apex Image. 

At a dingy airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, twenty-nine-year-old Sajit Lama falls into her mother’s arms, weeping. “I’m sorry, Mama. I wasn’t able to bring you anything,” she cries. “It’s okay. The most important thing is that you’re home,” her mother replies. Sajit has just spent the past ten years of her life confined in Lebanon, working for over a decade on a single year’s salary. During that time, her employers, a wealthy Lebanese family, stole her passport, cut her off from communication with the outside world, and forced her to work in their home as a maid for years without compensation. Unfortunately, Sajit is one among millions of victims of the kafala system, a legal framework through which employers in the Middle East sponsor migrant workers and exploit them for their labor. With no enforcement of international labor standards, sponsors are given almost exclusive dominion over their employees, who are given little recourse in the event of financial, physical, or sexual abuse. By all accounts, the kafala system is a modern form of slavery, yet it continues to prop up entire economies with its profits. Simply put, the international community has a responsibility to curb this injustice and to make the future development of the region conditional upon its abolition of the system that has robbed so many millions of their own chance at prosperity. 

In Islamic jurisprudence, the word “kafala” means something akin to “sponsorship,” and is meant to describe a form of legal guardianship that resembles the caring act of adopting a child. In spite of its history, as massive natural resource reserves were discovered in the Arabian Gulf over the course of the mid-twentieth century, kafala morphed into something much more sinister. Within only a few years, newly oil-rich states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) needed a malleable workforce that could be brought in during times of growth and shuttled out amidst economic downturn. The most efficient way to create such a labor market is to legally empower employers to the greatest possible degree and limit the bargaining power of the common laborer, which is exactly what the future member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) did. The GCC, a regional economic bloc including Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the UAE, would later dominate the region’s affairs in the latter half of the century, particularly by encouraging the practice of sponsoring foreign laborers. By the new millennium, most oil refineries, construction sites, and infrastructure projects in the Gulf were staffed by migrant workers from impoverished South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries. Today, domestic workers account for over 95% of the workforce in Qatar and the UAE for an average of over 70% in the GCC more broadly. In all of these countries, there are no means by which laborers might collectively bargain, much less individually fight against their employer’s abusive behaviors. Domestic laborers are often confined to inhumane working and living conditions, and their whereabouts are strictly policed by their superiors. They leave their homes in the hope of providing for their families, and many, like Sajit, do not see those families for decades. In essence, what originally began as a positive legal concept to establish guardianship over a child has now morphed into a way to infantilize laborers that are the backbone of entire economies.

The question for the rest of the world is simultaneously simple and complex: What do we do about this? There is certainly no panacea for such a complicated problem, but relief might be found if international stakeholders are willing to use their financial leverage in the region against its greatest perpetrators. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are without a doubt the most geopolitically consequential nations in the region, and it’s no coincidence that both heavily depend on foreign workers for economic progress. Both nations have built massive fortunes through oil production and private foreign investment respectively, the majority of which has been generated through the sweat of migrants. It stands to reason, then, that if the international community–particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, and other major regional stakeholders–can sustain pressure on local superpowers, they could allow reformists to take advantage of these nations’ reliance on foreign investment as a functional necessity for their continued growth. In Saudi Arabia, the ambitious Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has set forth a grand vision to transform the nation by funding lavish infrastructure projects and encouraging the growth of new domestic service industries. The UAE has followed a similar path, investing heavily in sustainability technology and its already vibrant tourism industry. Unsurprisingly, such sprawling advancements can only be realized with the help of massive foreign capital and cheap labor, which introduces a point of leverage that could be critical in this struggle. At every point where migrant workers are charged with building or maintaining these grand projects, foreign governments should then require that their public and private investment be conditional upon the recipient nations’ treatment of those workers. At the very least, substantial proof of ethical labor practices must be shown. By doing this, the global community exerts leverage to protect against human rights abuses, and in targeting regional power players, can expect cascading benefits. 

An alternate solution requires that we look both eastward and westward for reference. In Xinjiang Province, China, there is credible evidence to suggest that local Uyghur Muslims are being forced to live in labor camps and manufacture goods for the Chinese state. This fairly obvious violation of human rights garnered much international attention, which eventually manifested itself in the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA): the United States’ effort at legislating the crisis. The act outlaws all imports from the region on the assumption that they were produced using forced labor. While generally expected to be effective, experts note that the UFLPA will be severely limited in its impact if it is not accompanied by the passage of similar laws abroad. Though not entirely analogous in scope, the UFLPA can be considered a template for international legislation tackling the kafala system. Not only would foreign investment become conditional, but manufacturing would become a new arena in which the global community could pressure reform. In just the UAE, the manufacturing industry is valued at over $300 billion, the vast majority of which is generated directly from the sweat of domestic workers. If the United States and others were to establish a similar policy to the UFLPA in tackling the GCC’s embrace of kafala, the pressure of conditional investment would be multiplied, and the chances of abolition greatly increased. 

There is no question that these actions would be beneficial for larger reform efforts, but to assume that immediate substantive change will occur is unfortunately unrealistic. No legislation nor diplomatic strategy can be expected to work without genuine progress on the ground; an authentic change in domestic administrative culture is necessary. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other countries that legitimize the kafala system must realize internally that their current mode of operation is not just morally reprehensible but economically unsustainable. As labor markets become more competitive in a post-pandemic global economy, effectively enslaving over 90% of a domestic workforce is not exactly conducive to attracting new laborers. In fact, low labor mobility is frequently cited as a major factor in the limited growth potential of private sector operations in the Gulf, as workers simply do not want to risk becoming forced laborers themselves. Nations that contribute to the labor force under the kafala system, most notably Uganda and the Philippines, have gone as far as to successfully ban their citizens from working in the GCC until kafala-related abuses are rectified. In the case of the Philippines, the measure was recently lifted after considerable improvements were made to workers’ conditions in Saudi Arabia, demonstrating the efficacy of sustained pressure. Other kafala nations might also find themselves isolated from private business partners, as optical concerns are more relevant to commerce now than ever. Though the GCC has remained tight-lipped on the issue, it must certainly realize that, in the very same way that it cannot depend on petrochemicals forever, political change is on the horizon. 

At the center of this web of politics and profits stand people like Sajit and her mother–families that have been torn to shreds by the maw of this vicious system, and workers that now have to spend the remainder of their lives picking up the pieces. The international community has a responsibility to act not just because what is occurring is morally unjust, but also because, for millions of people, this is a matter of life and death. Qatar alone saw 6,500 of its migrant workers perish in preparation for the 2022 World Cup. Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands more continue to be abused or cut off from basic contact with the outside world. Regional stakeholders are uniquely positioned to use their financial leverage as a tool of change, and if they did, they would save lives and livelihoods. The kafala system has for nearly a century generated profit off of the bruised and bloodied backs of people daring to pursue opportunity away from home, and in the same way that prior iterations of slavery have been dealt with, justice can only be truly served in its abolition.

Adam Kinder is a staff writer at Columbia Political Review and a first-year student at Columbia College, majoring in Political Science with a particular interest in international relations and labor law.