On a cold December morning, prospective migrants gathered in Kathmandu, Nepal, in front of the swanky building hosting the Qatar Visa Centre (QVC), established in May 2019 to streamline the process of migrant workers travelling to Qatar.

The would-be migrants were hoping to join the estimated four million Nepalese people working abroad, predominantly in the Gulf and Malaysia, whose remittances account for 30% of Nepal's GDP, and bring financial benefits to their families and communities.

Yet Nepalese migrants who go to work in the Gulf risk exploitation and abuse, from recruitment fees and debt bondage to health problems due to heat stress.

Most of the Nepalese workers outside the Qatar Visa Centre were reluctant to share details about their recruitment process and the fees they had to pay. This is not surprising given that the area is swarming with recruitment agents who were in possession of migrants' passports and therefore – to some extent – in control of their fate.

These recruitment agents handed workers their passports for their QVC appointments – and duly retrieved them once the meeting was over. The workers would only be able to reclaim their passports when they paid their recruitment fees, which range as high as USD $1,200 – well above the USD $170 legally allowed. 

A few workers did agree to speak to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) about their search for better work opportunities. A man in his mid-fifties, who had toiled in Saudi Arabia and Qatar for nearly a decade, was hoping to return to Qatar to cover the cost of his daughters' marriages. Since settling back home in Nepal in 2009 he had been unable to secure employment and was living off subsistence farming.  

Given the lack of opportunities at home, the aspiring migrants who spoke to us seemed undeterred by the tales of labour abuse in Qatar frequently reported in Nepalese media.

These include stories of Nepalese migrants falling into forced labour due to deception by recruitment agents, working excessively long hours without overtime pay or days off, and health problems or even deaths due to work-related heat stress.

At a human rights documentation workshop in Kathmandu held by the Resource Centre, together with Equidem: Research and Consulting and the Law and Policy Forum for Social Change, in December, representatives from some 30 Nepalese civil society organizations discussed the abuses faced by migrant workers.

They described how migrant workers are routinely misled by recruitment agents offering lucrative jobs, only to find themselves in countries with much lower salaries and harsher conditions than promised. Many become trapped in order to pay off debts to recruiters and have little recourse to justice and remedy.

Women migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, as the Nepalese Government imposes migration restrictions supposedly to protect them from exploitation abroad. Not only are these intermittent bans on domestic work discriminatory, women's rights activists point out that by forcing women to seek alternative migration routes, these bans increase women's vulnerability to forced labour and trafficking. 

In July 2015, the Nepalese Government adopted the ‘free visa, free ticket’ policy, capping the amount migrants can pay recruitment agents at about USD $170. However, NGO workers, activists and returned migrants say the policy is widely flouted with the full knowledge of the Government. All of the people interviewed by BHHRC outside the QVC had paid above the legal limit. 

At the workshop, participants detailed challenges in holding unethical recruitment agents to account, including the agents’ refusal to provide migrants with receipts showing the real cost of their recruitment or copies of their contracts. Sometimes migrants only deal with sub-agents at the village level, and don’t even know the name of their main recruitment agency. 

Participants also noted recruitment agencies’ power and influence over Government officials, adding to the perception that recruitment agents are above the law. An NGO worker said that “if someone is rich or even has a nice car, we [Nepalese] say they must … own a recruitment agency”.

A Nepalese man employed by a labour supply agency for four years cleaning a five-star hotel in Dubai, UAE, recounted being given about a third of the salary promised by his recruitment agency in Nepal, and working 11 to 12 hour shifts without overtime pay. He never even considered holding his recruitment agent to account.  

Ultimately, the abuse of migrant workers will continue unless companies embed ethical recruitment policies in their operations, and ensure that their workforce – including subcontracted workers – do not pay for their jobs or find themselves in forced labour. 

There is a long way to go. Research carried out by BHRRC reveals the shortcomings of companies operating in the Gulf on preventing recruitment fees and contract substitution in their supply chains. 

A number of companies have demonstrated leadership in conducting due diligence, inserting requirements for ethical recruitment into contract clauses with recruitment agents, and having direct oversight of the recruitment process in migrant workers’ home countries. But their efforts need to be replicated more broadly and cover supplied and subcontracted labour. 

Investors can also help protect migrant workers in the Gulf. In a welcome move against impunity for such abuses, in November 2019 the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) made public its decision to divest from security company G4S over unacceptable human rights risks to migrant workers.

The decision was partially based on testimonies by Nepalese and other migrant workers, who paid exorbitant recruitment fees and were given misleading information by agents about their contracts, salaries and working conditions.

Rather than being the exception, the GPFG's move should be the rule for responsible investors, who by listening to workers’ voices can build human rights into their business decisions. Companies in destination countries, meanwhile, should not hide behind complex business models and supply chains to evade their responsibility for stopping exploitative recruitment practices and protecting migrant workers.