On July 19, 2004, Virginia Sherry, associate director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, answered online readers’ questions about her recent report, “Bad Dreams:” Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia.
This is Gini Sherry, associate director the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. I am the author of the “Bad Dreams” report. The report is based on interviews that we conducted in Bangladesh, India, and The Philippines with migrant workers returned from Saudi Arabia. I look forward to your questions.
Q: I was particularly struck by the accounts of violence against female migrant workers outlined in your report. What do you think the government of Saudi Arabia and the “international community” could do to protect them better, particularly given the isolated lives women lead in the kingdom?
Gini: Perhaps the most important reform the Saudi government could take would be to end the forced and indefinite confinement of these women. We found many of them unable to leave the homes or workplaces where they were employed for as long as two years. With mobility and contact with the outside world comes at least some form of protection. Isolation facilitates abuse. It should be illegal to hold any foreign worker, or, indeed, any person, in forced confinement in Saudi Arabia. We recommend that the government make this practice a criminal offense under the kingdom’s law.
How pervasive are the problems identified in your report?
That’s probably the most important question. By the government’s latest count, in May 2004, there are 8.8 million foreigners in Saudi Arabia—one foreigner for every two Saudi citizens. We know, again from statistics that the government provided to us in 2003, that foreigners hold 90-95 percent of the jobs in the private sector and comprise 65 percent of the total labor force. These are huge numbers. And there is a huge potential for abuse, given that these workers cannot organize strikes or form trade unions. Many of them came to the kingdom already heavily indebted and need that monthly paycheck to send home to their families. In such a situation, there is a huge disincentive to make waves.
Did you discuss the issues with the Saudi government?
We tried to. Earlier this year, we met with and then wrote to Prince Turki [al-Faisal], the Saudi ambassador in London, asking for an invitation to the kingdom to discuss the report with government officials prior to its release. We never received a reply. If we had those meetings in Riyadh, we would have included the government’s responses in the report itself. We made this clear to Prince Turki, and of course we are disappointed that we received no reply.
Do you have statistics on how many foreign workers have been imprisoned or executed in Saudi Arabia?
We tried to obtain this information from the Saudi government when we visited the kingdom in 2003. The director of prisons would not give us a breakdown of prisoner statistics. Approximately 40 percent of the people executed conducted in Saudi Arabia every year are foreigners.
Are Saudi employers still able to recruit large numbers of foreign migrant workers into the country? Or is word spreading within the communities in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and other countries that their fellow countrymen working in Saudi Arabia are being subjected to terrible abuses?
Unfortunately, poverty and unemployment in their home countries continue to drive workers to Saudi Arabia. Many are aware of the abuses suffered by others, and hope that they will be lucky.
Have the governments of these workers done anything about the abuse of their citizens in Saudi Arabia?
Yes and no, and it varies by country. The research indicated that it was often the lowest-paid workers, many of them illiterate, who had virtually no assistance from their embassies or consulates. But also this is important: In some cases the [workers’ home] governments were not notified of executions until after they were carried out. The Philippine government seems to be the most active, and the Bangladeshi government the least active. It seems that embassies and consular officials based in Saudi Arabia are more responsive when the countries they represent have active nongovernmental organizations dedicated to protecting the rights of migrant workers.
What other ways could you advocate for foreign workers’ rights, aside from attempting to meet with the Saudi government?
There are many ways to go, and I’ll speak to the question of advocacy in a minute, but we must remember that it is the Saudi government itself that must undertake reforms to improve conditions and end exploitation. Saudi Arabia does have, for example, a 120-member consultative council. This group needs to be educated about the abuses and the need for reform. It could advocate on its own inside the kingdom, which is important. To the extent that it can, the Saudi media could also help raise political consciousness to press for reform.
Where do most of these workers come from?
The overwhelming majority are from Asia, not from the West. For example, the largest Indian expatriate community in the world is in Saudi Arabia…about 1-1.5 million people. Bangladesh has about the same number of its citizens there, as does Pakistan. So these three countries alone have a total of about 3-4.5 million citizens in Saudi Arabia. In addition, there are about 900,000 expatriates—each—from the Philippines, Egypt, and Sudan. There are also 500,000 migrants from Indonesia, most of them women in domestic service, and 350,000 from Sri Lanka.
How can the Saudi government allow such serious abuses against foreign workers when they are such an important part of the Saudi economy?
It's an excellent question. Some thoughts: 1) Abuses are tolerated because there is an endless supply of workers competing for these jobs. 2) There is often a lack of accountability in Saudi Arabia, generally speaking. 3) Trade unions and other groups are not permitted, adding to the powerlessness that facilitates abuse.
You mention in your report that other countries in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] have a fair number of foreign workers in their countries. Are these workers subject to similar abuses as those in Saudi Arabia? If not, is this because of differences in the countries’ criminal justice systems? Or are there other factors?
Again, this is a very interesting and important question that is difficult for HRW to answer precisely because we have not carried out investigations in other GCC countries. We do know, however, that female workers in the other five GCC states [Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates] often face similar problems of forced confinement, unpaid salaries, and sexual abuse. The justice-system issues are staggering, and I would not want to venture a guess about territory we have not yet explored.
I have a question not completely related to the report. How are the human rights conditions for women in general in Saudi Arabia?
Women are second-class citizens in Saudi Arabia. They do not have rights equal to men, particularly in the justice system, in education, and in employment. Male relatives—husbands, brothers, or fathers—control their travel, access to medical care, and ability to work. Some Saudi women have been pressing for greater rights, although they have faced and continue to face fierce resistance from the conservative religious establishment and its allies.
Given the skyrocketing unemployment in Saudi Arabia, what do you think accounts for the Saudi economy’s continued reliance on migrant workers? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the government to curb economically motivated immigration to provide more jobs for unemployed Saudi citizens?
First, the reliance is historic. During the oil-boom years of the 1970s, both skilled and unskilled foreign workers were needed to staff jobs. Also, Saudi families had relatively high incomes and well-paying jobs in the public sector during this period. As the “youth bulge” in the kingdom’s demographic makeup has swelled the ranks of the unemployed, there are two problems: 1) Saudi youth generally do not want the lower-skilled jobs that foreigners take; and 2) Saudi youths are not educationally prepared for some of the skilled jobs that migrants have. The Saudi government has a policy of reducing the number of migrant workers in the kingdom, replacing them with Saudis.
Are there honor killings in Saudi Arabia? And if so, how common is are they?
Unlike other countries in the region, such as Jordan and Lebanon, this subject is not reported in the Saudi press generally. The press does report cases of women killing their husbands, but honor crimes do not receive coverage.
How sure is Human Rights Watch about the abuses that you describe in the report?
We believe that we have identified the major patterns of abuse based on the very detailed and persuasive accounts that we obtained from migrant workers in three different countries. Clearly, though, we would have preferred to have had access to Saudi Arabia itself to carry out research.
With access, we would have approached the work with our classic methodological model for in-country investigations. We would have been able to locate and interview workers currently employed in Saudi Arabia. We could have visited compounds where these workers are housed in large numbers and government labor offices where some of them come to complain about illegal practices. We would have hoped for access to prisons and deportation centers, where there are thousands of migrants with stories to be told. In addition, we would have sought information from the labor attaches at embassies and consulates of the major “sending” countries, and we would have interviewed experienced diplomats in Riyadh and Jeddah. All of this contributes to a broader picture. That said, we believe that the problems are pervasive and endemic.
Why?
Because we collected first hand testimonies from men and women in three countries: Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines. The commonality of the abuses that the workers reported to us was striking. And this is what our report is about.
What are you planning to investigate in your next report? Will you continue researching this issue?
We are now in the process of determining our next research project. But we will continue to do vigorous advocacy on the subject of this report.
What is the main message from HRW to the Saudi government?
There are two messages: 1) There is contempt for rule of law in Saudi Arabia. We see this with private employers who exploit workers terribly, we see it in the practices of the interior ministry, and we see it in courtrooms where judges do not conduct fair proceedings. We also see it in bilateral relationships between the Saudis and other governments. Diplomats from the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, to name only a few, have been frustrated by the government’s flaunting of treaty obligations, leaving these governments substantially in the dark about the detention, trials, and executions of their nationals.
Have U.S. officials reacted to the report at all? What kind of international reaction has the report generated? Has the current Saudi regime historically bowed to international outrage and changed their ways, or do they not care what the international community thinks?
I have not seen an official reaction yet from the U.S. government. Internationally, the report has received excellent press coverage, but the advocacy work that we will be doing at the United Nations and in other international fora will unfold over the next months. Sorry, but the last question is very difficult to answer in the minute that remains! So briefly: I do believe that the Saudi royal family is sensitive to international opinion. They were even before September 11, but are even more so in its aftermath. Sustained pressure and creative advocacy is required, though, to see changes on this complex issue of migrants and justice.
