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RIGHTS: World Bank Said to Ignore Migrant Abuse in Mideast

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 2003 (IPS) - The World Bank, which claims to fight child labour in poor countries, is holding its annual board meeting in a country widely known for exploiting migrant labour, a leading human rights organisation charged Monday.

”Thousands of children are trafficked to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for use as beggars and camel jockeys,” said Rory Mungoven of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The meetings of the Bank and its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will take place for the first time this week in the Middle East region.

The UAE, which is hosting the gathering in its commercial hub Dubai, Sep. 23-24, depends on 1.7 million migrant workers. From developing nations, such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh, Jordan, Nepal and the Philippines, they comprise some 90 percent of the UAE’s total workforce.

Dubai was also the venue of last week’s G-8 meeting of the finance ministers of the world’s leading industrial nations, plus Russia.

In June, the powerful private-sector representative, the World Economic Forum, held its first-ever Mideast meeting in Jordan.

The choice of venues following the U.S.-led attack on Iraq in March – along with Washington’s announcement of a Middle East Free Trade Agreement – has caused many opponents of economic globalisation to speculate that the northern-dominated bodies have singled out the region as an area ripe for economic exploitation.

Speaking from Dubai, Mungoven told IPS that migrant workers labour in ”very exploitative conditions” in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and are often unable to complain or seek redress.

”They are prevented from forming trade unions, and often end up hostage to abusive employers who have confiscated their passports or denied exit visas,” he added.

The workers face irregular status in the country if they flee terrible working conditions or their employers break the law, and so end up as targets in government sweeps, Mungoven said.

”The World Bank knows that migrants are key to economic development, but they’re not paying attention to the dark side of that issue,” he said.

”The Bank should be leading the way in international efforts to protect (workers) from exploitation and abuse.”

Six Gulf countries – Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – depend heavily on migrant labour.

According to HRW, nearly 10 million foreigners, most of them unskilled or semi-skilled migrants, work in the six states, which are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Among them are some of the world’s key oil producers. According to the latest U.N. figures, the UAE’s gross domestic product (GDP) last year was about 67 billion dollars and its per capita income over 20,000 dollars.

Consisting of seven sheikdoms – Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain, Fujairah and Ras al-Khaimah – the UAE is the third largest economy in the Arab world, ranking behind Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Currently, oil accounts for about 30 percent of UAE’s GDP and about 75 percent of its revenues.

Despite that wealth and their independence from international financial institutions (IFIs), Mungoven said the countries could still be pressed to treat their workers better.

”The Gulf states do not depend on the World Bank for money. But they are important contributors to the Bank and are seeking greater international recognition for their development efforts, as evidenced by this Dubai meeting.”

The Bank, he added, could use ”moral pressure on behalf of poorer countries” in South Asia and North Africa to make treatment of migrant workers an issue worldwide.

In a letter to World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn last week, HRW called on the institution to become a driving force behind an international convention aimed at protecting some 175 million migrant workers worldwide.

The convention, which came into force Jul. 1, has been ratified only by 22 of 191 member states of the U.N. General Assembly. But none of the Gulf states that depend upon migrant labour has made the move.

Nearly 60 percent of the world’s migrants live or work in Europe or North America. The rest can be found in countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, the UAE, Japan and Australia.

But even industrial nations in Europe and North America have shied away from the convention because it obliges them to provide basic rights to migrant workers.

The convention guarantees the workers rights to form associations and trade unions, freedom of expression and religion, to due process of the law, as well as to treatment equal to that which countries give their own citizens, in respect of economic and social rights.

The treaty, the International Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, was originally adopted by the General Assembly in December 1990.

But it took nearly 13 years for the convention to receive the 20 ratifications it needed to become international law.

The 22 countries that have ratified the treaty include Egypt, Morocco, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Ghana, Bolivia, Uruguay and Senegal – all countries whose migrant workers are employed either in the Middle East, Western Europe or North America.

Mungoven said that fears of terrorism and economic insecurity have also prompted a backlash against migrants and other foreigners in many countries. ”Migrant workers are vulnerable at the best of times, but they now need protection more than ever.”

In the United States, he said, hundreds of non-citizens of mostly Arab and South Asian descent have been detained, often arbitrarily, by the immigration service as part of the government’s investigation into the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

According to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), one person out of 35 is a migrant. The number of people living and working in a country other than their own is estimated at about 175 million, or about three percent of the world’s population.

According to HRW figures, remittances sent to home countries by migrant workers reached 80 billion dollars in 2002, up from 60 billion dollars in 1998.

These payments have become more important sources of finance for developing countries than private lending or official development assistance (ODA), HRW said.

In 2001, the payments were worth 10 billion dollars to India, six billion dollars to the Philippines and more than two billion dollars each to Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco.