"Middle East and North Africa is the worst region for working people,"

In 2023, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) continued to be the world’s worst region for workers’ rights, with an average rating of 4.53 falling between systematic violations and no guarantee of rights.

Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen were still beset with conflict, severely trampling fundamental liberties and rights of workers.

Notwithstanding progress in Qatar, the kafala system remained in place in several Gulf countries and in practice, migrant workers, who represented the overwhelming majority of the working population in the region, remained exposed to severe human rights abuses.

In Tunisia, unions feared for democracy and civil liberties as President Kais Saied further consolidated his autocratic powers, while in Algeria and Egypt, independent trade unions still struggled to obtain their registration from hostile authorities and were therefore unable to operate properly.

• 100% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa violated the right to collective bargaining. No change from 2022
• All 19 countries excluded workers from the right to establish and join a trade union. No change from 2022
• 100% of countries impeded the registration of unions. No change from 2022
• 95% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa violated the right to strike. No change from 2022
• 79% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa denied workers access to justice. No change from 2022
• 79% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa restricted free speech and assembly. Compared with 84% in 2022
• Workers experienced violent attacks in 53% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Compared with 42% in 2022
• 47% of countries in the Middle East and North Africa arrested and detained workers. No change from 2022

Workers' rights violations:

Right to collective bargaining:

Employers in the garment sector in Egypt often did not respect the provisions of concluded collective agreements...

In Israel, the Histadrut declared a labour dispute in April 2022, following unilateral actions of the Minister of Transport, which led to the privatisation of several wharves. The Histadrut denounced the government’s unilateral action in bad faith and in violation of social dialogue, with these privatisation measures following years of understanding between the parties...

Right to establish and join a trade union:

Workers excluded from labor protections:

In Jordan, foreign workers did not have the right to establish trade unions. They could only join a trade union constituted in one of the 17 sectors strictly defined by the government. In practice, foreign workers were disproportionately represented in excluded sectors where no collective representation is allowed, including the domestic sector (where non-Jordanians accounted for almost all of the workforce) and the agricultural sector (where non-Jordanians represented 70 per cent of the workforce). Due to these legal restrictions, foreign workers in these sectors were effectively deprived of their right to establish and join trade unions.

In the education sector, almost 1,000 foreign workers were not allowed, by an Act of 2011, to join the Jordanian Teachers’ Association (JTA)....

Union busting:

On 11 July 2021, the Ministry of Electricity in Iraq issued a directive banning trade union committees and instructing employees in public-owned companies not to engage in such committees under penalty of criminal prosecution. The directive was still in force in 2023....

Right to strike:

Prosecution of union leaders:

Several strike actions in Lebanon were suppressed by the police who arbitrarily detained workers, especially those from overseas....

Dismissals for participating in strike action:

In Morocco, in June 2022, workers at the company Business Casablanca 2S, a subsidiary of the multinational Comdata Group which provides services to outsource customer interactions, organised a half-day strike to express their demands about low pay and lack of purchasing power. Most of the 1,400 workers of the company are affiliated with the Union Marocaine du Travail (UMT). As a result of this strike, seven unionised employees were fired. They were also criminally charged for their union activities....