UN expert urges Kuwait to redouble efforts to stop trafficking, exploiting domestic workers

While welcoming Kuwait’s commitment to fight trafficking in persons, a United Nations human rights expert … urged the Government to further strengthen its assistance and support measures for trafficked and exploited domestic workers, adopt prevention measures, and fully protect their rights.

“Migrants in irregular situations, including some refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless persons who work informally in the Kuwaiti economy are at risk of trafficking for both labour and sexual exploitation,” the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking, Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, said in a news release from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)… Ms. Giammarinaro said [migrant workers] flee their employers due to deception about the type and conditions of employment by recruitment agencies in countries of origin, and exploitation by their sponsors and employers in Kuwait. “Some domestic workers have been forced into prostitution,” she added.

The expert welcomed Kuwait’s determination to counter domestic servitude, which would otherwise be completely hidden, as it happens in many countries of the world…

The expert drew special attention to the sponsorship (Kafala) system, which binds every worker to an employer as a sponsor, and creates a situation of vulnerability which favours abusive and exploitative work relationships leading to human trafficking in the domestic work and in other sectors such as construction. She urged the Kuwait authorities to abolish and replace the Kafala system to allow migrant workers to enjoy substantial freedom in the labour market.