"A Brief Overview of Anti-Discrimination Regulations in Gulf Workplaces,"

In recent years, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states’ growing acceptance of international human rights standards and collaboration with organizations like the International Labour Organisation (ILO) have brought greater attention to employment discrimination in the region. As a result, some states have introduced new legislation to address the issue. Others have co-opted the language of international standards and conventions into PR exercises—without following through actual reform. Despite all this, enforcement remains limited, and discrimination both against and among migrant workers remains not only widespread but codified in other parts of the law...

The ILO’s Employment Discrimination Convention (No. 111) of 1958 serves as the standard framework for defining and addressing workplace discrimination. All Gulf countries except Oman have ratified the Convention, though its incorporation into their labour laws varies and remains limited...

Although Oman has not ratified ILO Convention No. 111, its new labour law includes provisions promoting equal treatment and prohibiting discriminatory termination of workers. In contrast, Qatar, despite being a signatory to the Convention, remains the only Gulf state without a workplace anti-discrimination law. (See Table 1 below)...

Labour regulations in the Gulf States generally do not cover all forms of employment discrimination. Notably, discrimination based on national extraction—one of the seven grounds outlined in ILO Convention No. 111—is not only absent from the anti-discrimination provisions in all labour laws (with the exception of the UAE, which includes the term “national origin” in its regulations) but also actively supported and perpetuated by state policies, as discussed below...

Interviews and research by Migrant-Rights.Org highlight workplace discrimination as one of the most common issues faced by migrant workers in the Gulf. A prevalent form of this discrimination is wage disparity, where workers of different nationalities receive different pay for the same tasks. Discrimination also extends to working conditions, with some workers working longer hours, given poor accommodations, getting two days off while others—sometimes none—based solely on nationality...