publications

IV. Abuses in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates

We all want to go back to Sri Lanka, we came here with so many expectations, we never thought that all these things would happen.148

—Indrani P., age 32, at the Sri Lankan embassy shelter in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE, Sri Lankan women domestic workers face a range of abuses and forms of exploitation. They face pervasive workplace abuses: nonpayment or underpayment of wages; wage exploitation; forced confinement in the workplace; excessively long working hours; and no rest days. Sri Lankan women domestic workers may also suffer physical, psychological, and sexual abuse; food deprivation and inadequate living conditions; confiscation of their identity documents; restricted communication; limitations on their ability to return to their home countries when they wish to do so; and exploitation by labor agents in their countries of employment. In many instances, these abuses amount to forced labor in violation of international law.

Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers also face abuses that affect broader populations in their countries of employment, including racial discrimination against foreign nationals, particularly those from Asia and Africa; gender segregation and gender inequality in the justice system; and restrictions on religious minorities’ freedom of religion. For example, Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian domestic workers from Sri Lanka reported they experienced restrictions on their ability to practice their religion. Krishnan S., a Hindu domestic worker, told Human Rights Watch, “[My employers] would not allow me to practice my religion…I did not have freedom to practice my religion in any of the places [I worked], Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Lebanon. My name is Krishnan, so when [my employers in Lebanon] came to know my name they said I cannot practice my religion in the house. They said when I get back home I can practice my religion.”149

It should be noted that some of the women Human Rights Watch interviewed had positive experiences working abroad. Some employers provided bonuses or gifts of gold jewelry or household appliances to workers at the end of their contracts. Some Muslim domestic workers had the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Mecca with their employers. One woman told Human Rights Watch of her experience in Kuwait, “The gods should bless the Arabic employers who I worked with. They did not treat me as a maid; instead, they treated me as a friend… I liked the place very much, and they liked me and my work.”150 However, this was not the norm, and the great majority of domestic workers interviewed for this report experienced a range of workplace abuses in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE.

Unpaid and Underpaid Wages

Whenever I asked for my salary, they beat me up. I got the first three months salary somehow. I got a call that my father was really sick, then I asked for my salary and they beat me up.... They told me, “We bought you using our money, you have to work for that.”151

—Latha P., 32-year-old mother of four whose employer did not pay her for five months of work, and who, when interviewed, was unable to return to Sri Lanka from Saudi Arabia because she had no money for a return ticket

About 20 percent of the women domestic workers interviewed for this report did not receive their full salaries. These women were not paid for periods of work ranging from a few months to four years. Many others were paid wages that were lower than the wages stipulated in their work contracts or orally promised by their labor agents. Non-payment of wages is one of the most frequent complaints reported by Sri Lankan domestic workers. About 20 percent of complaints the SLBFE recorded from women migrant workers concerned nonpayment of agreed wages.152 The Legal Aid Commission, a government-funded statutory body that provides legal aid to about 100 domestic workers each year, says that the most common complaint they receive is nonpayment of salaries.153

Most of the domestic workers with whom Human Rights Watch spoke were paid monthly salaries that were between US$17 and $107 lower than the agreed-upon wages, receiving wages that were as much as 50 percent lower than the contracted wage. Domestic workers reported that their employers in Lebanon paid US$100 per month instead of their stipulated salary of US$125-150; in Saudi Arabia, workers promised 450-800 riyals [US$120-213] per month were paid only 300-400 riyals [US$80-107]; in Kuwait workers promised 40-45 dinars [US$142-160] per month were paid 35 dinars [US$124]; and in the UAE, workers promised 500-750 dirhams [US$136-204] received monthly wages of 400-450 dirhams [US$109-123].

Sepalika S., a 25-year-old mother of one, described her experience in Saudi Arabia:

It was a lot of work, and I asked for my salary and they said they can send money later.... When I asked for my salary, Baba154 would say, “I will pay you tomorrow,” or “I will pay you soon”…. When I told Baba that “I need my salary, you’re not paying my salary, and workload is very high,” Baba assaulted me. He used his hands to hit me on my cheeks... I did not eat the whole day, and the next day they started shouting again. I went on not eating for two days to protest [as a hunger strike], asking them to pay the salary…. They did not pay me. They did not pay me a single cent; for 10 months they did not pay me.155

After working for 10 months without any salary, Sepalika S. ran away from her employers. At the time Human Rights Watch interviewed her, she had not recovered any of the wages owed to her, which amounted to US$1,600. Another domestic worker explained that in Lebanon, “I spoke to the lady of the house and told her I have signed an agreement that says I will be paid US$150, but you are paying me only US$100. She told me, ‘Although you have signed a contract for US$150 for your salary, you don’t have any experience and the current rate for inexperienced maids is US$100, and the rate for experienced maids is US$125.’”156

Table 2 – Official monthly salaries, and monthly and hourly salaries paid as reported to Human Rights Watch:

Country of employment

Official monthly salary for domestic workers

Actual monthly salaries paid to domestic workers

Actual hourly salaries paid to domestic workers, at 16-18 hours per day157

Lebanon

US$130158

US$100

US$0.19-0.21

UAE

550 dirhams159

(US$150)

400-450 dirhams

(US$109-123)

US$0.20-0.26

Saudi Arabia

500 riyals160

(US$133)

300-400 riyals (US$80-107)

US$0.15-0.22

Kuwait

40 dinars161

(US$142)

35-40 dinars (US$124-142)

US$0.23-0.30

Employers commonly refuse to pay domestic workers on a monthly basis and instead withhold wages for months at a time or until the domestic worker has completed her contract. Employers sometimes withhold domestic workers’ wages as a tactic to prevent workers from running away. One domestic worker said,

I did not have any Saudi Arabian currency in my hand until I came back [to Sri Lanka]... They gave me a check [just] before leaving Saudi Arabia. I think they did not want to give me money because the earlier maids ran away from that house. I think they wouldn’t give me money so that I couldn’t run away… I asked for my money earlier.162

When domestic workers whose employers withheld their salaries finally fled abusive conditions, these workers were cheated out of the withheld wages. As detailed later in this report, biases and gaps in the settlement of labor cases make it difficult for domestic workers to claim unpaid wages, and most report that they never receive the full payments due or any payment at all. This problem also occurs in emergency situations; for example, many domestic workers fleeing the July 2006 war in Lebanon never received their withheld wages. ILO Convention No. 95 on the Protection of Wages, which Lebanon and Sri Lanka have ratified, specifies that wages should be paid directly and regularly to workers, and that workers should be informed of the conditions of payments before beginning employment.163 The ILO Protection of Wages Recommendation, which provides supplemental guidance on the provisions of the Protection of Wages Convention, stipulates that for workers whose remuneration is fixed on a monthly or annual basis, wages should be paid at least once a month.164

The widespread practice of withholding wages makes it possible for employers to make arbitrary and improper deductions from domestic workers’ salaries. Many domestic workers interviewed for this report complained that their employers deducted one to six months’ salary—typically three months’ salary—to pay for their return air ticket. An experienced labor agent told Human Rights Watch that work contracts usually require the employer to pay the return ticket if the worker completes the contract period: “According to the rules there the employer can’t touch the woman’s salary... The employer has to pay for the return ticket if she completes the contract period. This is in the contract.”165 Contracts also generally stipulate that workers do not have to pay for their return ticket if they return during their first three months of employment. 166

The Kuwait Ministry of Interior’s standardized domestic labor contract, put into effect on October 1, 2006, requires employers to pay for the repatriation of domestic workers who leave their jobs regardless of how long they have been employed.167 The UAE’s unified contract for domestic workers requires employers to purchase an air ticket upon completion of the contract and when employers terminate the contract early.168 In its model employment contract for domestic workers in the Middle East, the SLBFE advocates that the employer pay the return airfare in most situations, including completion of the contract, illness of the worker, or the employer’s violation of contract terms.169 The ILO Migration for Employment Recommendation (No. 86) states that when a migrant worker is obliged to leave her employment for reasons for which she is not responsible, the cost of the return journey “shall in no case fall on the migrant [her]self.”170

Employers also arbitrarily deducted domestic workers’ salaries to cover the costs of compulsory medical testing upon arrival, medication, medical care, a national identity card, visa renewal, uniforms and other clothes, food, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, other necessities, and for perceived mistakes in domestic workers’ work. Most employers provided no notice that salary deductions would be made, and in some cases workers learned of deductions only when employers paid their withheld salary, minus the deducted amounts, at the end of their contract period. Work contracts generally require employers to cover cost of food and lodging, visa renewal, and other administrative costs. Trainers leading the compulsory SLBFE training and recruitment agents also generally inform domestic workers that employers will cover the cost of other necessities. One domestic worker’s employer in Saudi Arabia deducted four months’ salary to pay for her abaya [a black full-length garment worn by women in Saudi Arabia] and toiletries.171 Another domestic worker’s employer in Kuwait deducted 40,000 rupees [US$355], or three months’ salary, for medical care she received.172 ILO Convention No. 95 on the Protection of Wages prohibits salary deductions by the employer except when in accordance with national law or pursuant to written agreement between the worker and the employer.173

None of the women we interviewed for this report received compensation for unpaid wages, and nearly all were unaware of redress mechanisms available to them. A domestic worker who worked in Kuwait said, “I had completed one year and four months of work that I wasn’t paid for, and since then I have not got a single cent. The embassy official promised me he would get the money and would send it to me, but he has not sent me anything…. Although I have worked this long I have only four months salary.”174 Workers typically believed that once they returned to Sri Lanka, it would be impossible to recover unpaid wages. A woman whose employer in Lebanon paid her only US$10 for four months’ salary realized that her employer had cheated her when she checked the exchange rates posted at the airport in Sri Lanka. She said, “I thought of calling [my employer] but the problem started in Lebanon. I just gave up.”175

Wage Exploitation

Domestic workers are excluded from the labor laws of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE. This denies domestic workers the right to overtime pay in these countries and from benefiting from the minimum wage laws in Kuwait and Lebanon (see Section V, “Exclusion from Labor Laws”). The UAE and Kuwait have set informal minimum wages for domestic workers that are significantly below the prevailing wages earned by other workers in these countries.176

Sri Lankan domestic workers receive substantially lower wages than citizen workers and other non-citizen workers performing work of equal value. In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE, in-house domestic workers who live with their employers almost always are paid fixed monthly salaries without payment for overtime. Because of the long hours they work—often 16 hours and as much as 21 hours per day, with some workers required to be on call around the clock—domestic workers’ hourly wages are extremely low, working out to about 15 to 30 cents per hour.177

An increasing number of countries, lured by the economic benefits of workers’ remittances, are encouraging low-income women to migrate for domestic work. The resulting international competition has led Sri Lankan labor agents to bargain down Sri Lankan workers’ salaries, which have actually dropped in value over time. Adjusted for inflation, Sri Lankan domestic workers’ salaries brought them five times as much in 1980 as they did in 1994.178 Evidence suggests that salaries have again dropped precipitously since that time. Fifteen years ago, Sri Lankan domestic workers earned 400 riyals per month in Saudi Arabia, and workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported that they now earn only 300-400 riyals [US$80-107] per month.179 The inflation-adjusted value of this salary of 400 riyals is now about half of what it was worth in 1992.180 As the cost of living in Sri Lanka has risen due to rampant inflation, the prices of consumer items have increased. As a result, the real value of stagnant salaries (i.e. the purchasing power of domestic workers’ wages) has decreased over time, notwithstanding currency fluctuations.181

In Saudi Arabia, Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers typically earn only one fifth of the prevailing private sector minimum wage. Although there is no official minimum wage in Saudi Arabia, the de facto private sector minimum wage is 1,500 riyals [US$400] per month, based on the mandated minimum monthly contribution to the pension system.182 In the UAE, which does not provide minimum wage protections to any workers,  the minimum wage stipulated for Sri Lankan domestic workers is only 600 dirhams [US$163],183 less than the prevailing wage for other service sector jobs typically performed by men, such as drivers and gardeners. Lebanon excludes domestic workers from its minimum wage protections, and Sri Lankan domestic workers typically receive wages that are half the minimum wage guaranteed by law.184 Although Kuwait’s labor law does not establish a minimum wage for private sector employees, it does provide minimum wage protections for public sector employees, stipulating a minimum wage of 200 dinars [US$710] for Kuwaiti citizens, and 90 dinars [US$320] for non-citizens.185 The minimum wage for domestic workers in Kuwait specified in the Ministry of Interior’s standardized domestic labor contract is only 40 dinars [US$142], less than half the minimum wage guaranteed to other non-citizen workers.186 The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has urged Kuwait to extend minimum wage provisions to non-citizens working in the private sector, such as domestic workers, to make it possible for these workers to enjoy a decent standard of living.187

Migrant domestic workers’ wages typically differ based on the woman worker’s national origin and religion, with Sri Lankan workers earning less than Indonesian and Filipina domestic workers, and Muslim workers earning higher salaries than workers of other faiths. Nayanadini B. told Human Rights Watch, “In Saudi Arabia we get only 400 riyals [US$107], not enough… The Filipinos get 800 riyals [US$213], the Indonesians get 600 [US$160]. We do the same work as them.”188 Another domestic worker said, “The salary in Lebanon is not enough. I got US$100 per month... Women from the Philippines get 200, women from Sri Lanka 100. It’s discrimination. The Philippines is a poor country, Sri Lanka also is poor country, why is there a difference?”189

The Sri Lankan government has attempted to negotiate a higher salary for Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers, but has encountered opposition from Sri Lankan labor agents who fear that countries of employment will look to other sending countries for cheaper labor, cutting recruitment agents’ profits. In his 2007 Budget Speech, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the government would stipulate a minimum salary for domestic workers at 25,000 rupees [US$222] a month for 2007, with an increase to 50,000 rupees [US$444] within the next three years.190 Labor agents, through their professional association, the Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies (ALFEA), protested the proposal and it was abandoned.191 The Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare, Keheliya Rambukwelle, announced in May 2007 that the government plans to negotiate with countries of employment to raise Sri Lankan domestic workers’ minimum salaries to US$400.192 A SLBFE official told Human Rights Watch, “Now we are trying to develop salary standards. We are giving notice to the Middle East countries that beyond a salary range, nothing below US$125, in some countries US$150, that Sri Lankan women won’t work. We are going to be a bit tough, because we had some bad experiences with ladies in Lebanon who were paid only US$100. In some countries the salaries are very poor, and we have given a serious policy to Lebanese recruiting agents that you shouldn’t expect Sri Lankan women to work for less than US$130.”193

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), to which Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka are party, provides for the “right to equal remuneration, including benefits, and to equal treatment in respect of work of equal value.”194 The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Kuwait, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka are party, provides that the right to just conditions at work includes remuneration which provides all workers with, at a minimum, “[f]air wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind in particular women being guaranteed conditions of work not inferior to those enjoyed by men, with equal pay for equal work,” and a decent living for themselves and their families.195 These rights must be extended to women without discrimination.196 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) provides that everyone, without any discrimination, has a right to equal pay for equal work, and to just and favorable remuneration, to ensure “an existence worthy of human dignity.”197

The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work includes “the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation” among the fundamental workers’ rights that all ILO members have a duty to uphold.198 As ILO member states, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE have an obligation to uphold women’s right to non-discrimination in employment regardless of the status of ratification of the relevant ILO conventions.199 The ILO Equal Remuneration Convention, No. 100, which Saudi Arabia, UAE, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka ratified, requires states to ensure women and men receive equal remuneration for work of equal value.200 ILO Convention No. 111 concerning Discrimination in Employment and Occupation, which Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka ratified, requires governments to promote equal employment opportunities and equal treatment in employment for women and men.201

Physical and Psychological Abuse

[The lady] got angry because I switched on the cooker before getting the flour, so she kicked me in the back. Then she assaulted me for getting up late, and she assaulted me for not finishing a job. The lady assaulted me with whatever she had in her hands, sometimes a broomstick, sometimes knives… Baba’s son said, “Don’t think about going back to Sri Lanka, there is a place for people who don’t listen. One day I will take you there and leave you, and there are people there who will beat and punish you.” He scolded me and told me, “Shut up and do whatever my mother says, like a dog. If you don’t, there won’t be any bones left in your body.”202

—Noor F., age 36, a former domestic worker in Kuwait

Domestic workers also face criminal abuses such as physical assault. Of the 100 female domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed, 20 said they had experienced physical abuse by their employers or their employers’ children. Many experienced psychological abuse, including verbal abuse. An official overseeing the SLBFE’s Sahana Piyasa shelter, which provides assistance to domestic workers arriving at the international airport nearby, estimated that the shelter receives three to ten cases of severe physical abuse each month.203

The physical abuse women reported included beatings, deliberate burning with hot irons, kicking, slapping, and hair-pulling. Domestic workers told Human Rights Watch that their employers had beat them with their hands, slippers, rubber hoses, a vacuum cleaner, basins, wires, chairs, wooden planks, broomsticks, knives, an iron bar, and in one case, a cane. At the time Human Rights Watch interviewed them, several women bore the scars of this abuse: burns, scars, a cast, shorn hair. Some women told us they experienced enduring health consequences of injuries they had sustained, such as headaches, back pain, or loss of range of movement in their arms.

Some women told us their employers abused them for “errors” in their work. Of her experience in Saudi Arabia, one woman said, “Even for a little mistake, they hit me. If there was any little garbage on the floor, the lady took my hand and rubbed [the trash] on it.”204 Another woman told us that in Kuwait, “The eldest daughter hit the younger one and the younger one started to cry and scream. Without asking me, Baba suspected me of hitting her. Immediately he pushed me towards a wall and he hit me. He hit me with his hands, he kicked me with his boots. He kicked me on my hip and I fell down. I felt pain in my hip; I had pain for one week.”205

A domestic worker who says her employers in Kuwait severely abused her. She reports she underwent multiple operations to treat injuries resulting from the abuse.
©2007 Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai/Human Rights Watch

Women domestic workers reported that physical and psychological abuse increased when they tried to assert their rights. An 18-year-old woman reported that her employer abused her as punishment for requesting her wages, medical care, and the ability to contact her family. She said,

When I asked to call Sri Lanka, they started beating me up. The lady employer used the iron [to burn me]... Initially she paid me. She has not paid five months’ salary to me. When I started to ask for my salary, she started to beat me…. One day I felt really ill because she was beating me and I had a headache…I requested to go to the hospital. She put me in my room and locked me in my room for four days and left... I was in the room for four days without food and water. I fainted.206

Ponnamma S. similarly told Human Rights Watch, “For one year five months, [I received] no salary at all. I asked for money and they would beat me, or cut with me a knife, or burn me. They burned one arm and cut it with a knife. There are markings on my back. My body ached all over. I was beaten all over. They would take my head and bang it against the wall. Whenever I requested my salary, there would be a fight.”207

Human Rights Watch documented cases of especially severe abuse by employers. For example, on the day she returned to Sri Lanka from Kuwait, Lakmini J., a thin and frail 47-year-old who looked far older than her age, showed us her deformed hands and large scars on her arm and shoulder. She told us she had undergone seven operations to repair injuries from abuse by her employers. She elaborated:

[My employers] badly hit me. My hair was down to my knees. [The lady employer] cut off my hair, like a man…. Everyday they wanted to see my blood. There is a black type of band, black wire, they hit me with that. They also cut me with a knife to see my blood. They dug [cut] in my thigh, on [my] arm… They burned my body and destroyed it. They put a knife to the fire [gas stove] and burned me… Every day for nine months continuous they beat me…. I can say it: for nine months I went to hell.208

Over the course of nine months, until she escaped, Lakmini J.’s employers subjected her to almost unrelenting violence, including threatening to kill her; knocking her off a ladder; burning her with chlorine powder; beating her with cables; and cutting her with hot knives—resulting in fractures of her leg and hand, and loss of use of her hands.209

Psychological abuse reported by domestic workers included insults, threats of physical harm or death, being locked up in small spaces, denial of food, and punitive cutting of hair. One woman told us that her Kuwaiti employer, “went to the kitchen and took a knife and told me he would kill me, cut me up into little pieces, and put the little pieces of me in the cupboard.”210 Yuvani J. told us that in Saudi Arabia, her employer and his son repeatedly threatened her: “The son and father…said, ‘We will kill you and put you in the dustbin.’ They used a wire to beat me and they slapped me…. They were always saying they are going to kill me. One day, the father and son said they were going to kill me. They had a knife. I ran, but the father pushed me against the wall.”211 Yuvani J. sustained a broken leg as a result.

Sexual Abuse

I was sleeping and the [lady] employer’s younger brother came into my room naked... When he came into the room naked I started screaming and took a stick and hit him on the head.212

—Padma S., 39 years old, describing her experience as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia

Of the 100 women Human Rights Watch interviewed, 13 reported sexual harassment or assault by their employer or employer’s sons. Of these, five had been raped, and three became pregnant as a consequence. Others may have experienced such abuse but been unwilling to talk about it. The number of Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers who are sexually harassed or assaulted is not known, but it is clear that sexual abuse is underreported—and likely vastly underreported—due not only to the stigma and shame attached to such abuse, common in other contexts, but also to the fear of countercharges by employers, the isolation and relative powerlessness of domestic workers, and the lack of accessible complaint mechanisms. Several domestic workers complained of repeated sexual harassment and abuse by male employers or their sons, including offers to pay money in exchange for sex, unwanted fondling, and attempted rape. Many of the domestic workers and NGO activists Human Rights Watch interviewed identified sexual harassment and assault of Sri Lankan domestic workers as a primary concern.

Domestic workers experienced a range of sexual abuse. Sexual harassment often took the form of demands for sex and other unwanted sexual propositions. “Baba wanted to sleep with me,” a domestic worker told us of her employer in Saudi Arabia. “For three days, my employer came to me, trying to seduce me. I said, ‘I’ll tell your wife!’ He said, ‘If you tell her, I will kill you.’ He asked me to come to his room but I refused.”213

Some domestic workers described how sexual harassment created a hostile working environment and affected their ability to do their jobs. Chamali W., a 27-year-old domestic worker, said, “Both the sons…used to remove their clothes and expose themselves to me…. They removed their trousers. They have pictures of naked girls on their mobile phone and they showed them to me…. They would come and touch me. I can’t work like that.”214

Several women reported that the sexual harassment and assault was repeated, and they described their feelings of distress, anxiety, and fear. One woman who had worked in Saudi Arabia told us, “Many times Baba’s two sons…removed my clothes and assaulted me with their friends... They did not allow me to be alone. They did this a lot of times… While I slept in the night the boy would leave and come into my room while the others were sleeping.”215 Selvakumari W., a 26-year-old domestic worker, told us that she endured nine months of ongoing sexual harassment in Saudi Arabia:

I had no room to lock from the inside. [My employer]’s a big man, he tried to touch me. His son also tried to do that. I told him, “I will go to the police”…. I did not have my own room, there was a little place for me and an extra mattress and I slept in that place. I was not able to lock the door…. He put his hand [on me] and tried to touch my chest… Several times he tried to touch me… [W]hen I was sleeping, he came home and removed his trousers. He always…tried to do this. I was scared and I sat in the corner of the bed. He said, “You don’t have to be afraid of me.” He tried to do this again and again over nine months.216

A domestic worker told Human Rights Watch that her employer groped her in the household where she was working in Lebanon: “Baba came to my room. There was nobody in the house except his son… He tried to hold me and tried to touch my breast. I told him I have come here not to be friendly with you but to work and build a house.”217 Other domestic workers reported that the sexual harassment they experienced included offers of money in exchange for sex.218

Five women told us they were raped by their employers or others in the households where they worked. Amanthi K., a 32-year-old domestic worker, agreed to allow us to relate her experience: “The boss approached me several times but I refused. The boss’ wife went out frequently and one night he came to the kitchen and he wanted to have sex and I refused and he took me by force. When I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant only then did people realize.”219 Chamali W. told us her employer’s son raped her in Saudi Arabia:

[A]ll of a sudden he hugged me. I beat him with the iron, he threw the iron and grabbed my arm and dragged me to a separate room... He pushed me to the floor and removed all of my clothes. He raped me. I felt lifeless, I couldn’t get up, I felt so weak.220

Since adultery or fornication is criminalized in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE, rape victims may face the prospect of detention, prosecution, and punishment if they cannot provide evidence of the rape. Amanthi K. told us Saudi authorities arrested her at the hospital after she gave birth to a child resulting from rape by her employer. She said, “The case was given to the courts and they said…, ‘You have come here to work and you have committed a crime.’ I said that the boss has committed a crime and not me.”221 Unable to meet the standard of evidence required, she was imprisoned for nine months. Because crimes of sexual violence often take place in private settings, the only evidence before courts often consists of the differing accounts given by a male national employer and a foreign woman employee, with the former generally given the benefit of the doubt.

Heavy Workload and Excessively Long Work Hours without Rest

Even if I went to bed at 3:30 a.m., I had to get up by 5:30 a.m…. I had continuous work until 1 a.m., sometimes 3 a.m…. Once I told the employer, “I am a human like you and I need an hour to rest.” She told me, “You have come to work; you are like my shoes, and you have to work tirelessly.”222

—Kumari Indunil, age 23, a former domestic worker in Kuwait

A domestic worker’s daily workload often involves work without break or limit, including cleaning her employer’s house or houses inside and out, including sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, cleaning multiple bathrooms, washing the exterior of the house, cleaning the yard, and washing windows; cooking three meals a day; preparing snacks for family members on demand; washing and ironing the entire household’s laundry; caring for multiple children, including providing care for infants, escorting children to and from school, feeding them, bathing them, and putting them to sleep; caring for elderly, sick, or disabled family members; and washing family cars. The majority of domestic workers interviewed for this report complained of heavy workload, and in some cases working for large extended families living together in multi-floored compounds as the sole domestic worker for the household. Fathima S. described her workload in Saudi Arabia:

I had to cook, clean the house up and down, wash and iron clothes, clean the tiles on the floor, and I was the only maid in that house and I had to cook for parties in the house where there were a lot of visitors… There were eight people in that last house, including some young girls and an old lady who couldn’t move, and I had to take her to the bath, give her a shower, feed her food. The workload…was very heavy. I had to cook, clean eight bathrooms, and she kept saying that I haven’t done this and that. I had to clean the three-story house daily, clean the walls daily, and she asked me to clean the backyard of the house daily. I used to get up at 5 a.m. and finish work at 11 p.m. If they had parties in the house, by the time I went to sleep it was 12 a.m. or later. She never gave me time to rest, always I had to work.223

Women told Human Rights Watch that they typically worked 16-18 hours per day, some as many as 21 hours each day, seven days a week without a day of rest or holidays. Because of their long work hours, many domestic workers regularly suffered sleep deprivation. With only a few exceptions, domestic workers worked without a single day of rest, sometimes for years at a time. Several workers reported that a day of rest was not included in their contract, and some did not know whether their contracts contained a provision concerning days off. One woman who worked as a domestic worker in Lebanon for one-and-a-half years without a single day off told Human Rights Watch, “I had no day off the whole time.”224

The majority of domestic workers we interviewed worked without any significant time to rest during the workday. For instance, Manaranjani S. worked for a 24-person household in Abu Dhabi, UAE, as the sole domestic worker. She cared for 13 children, including one infant, and worked every day from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. without a single day of rest and was not permitted to rest at all during the day. She said, “My body needed a rest, but I was not allowed to.”225 One domestic worker said that in Saudi Arabia, “I couldn’t sit down and take a break, I had no time to sleep, no time to go to the toilet even.”226 Another woman worker told us that in Lebanon, “[My employers] didn’t even allow me to sit, I had to stand always.”227 Thirty-six-year-old Noor F. explained that in Kuwait, her employers did not permit her to rest, even when she struggled with a workload that involved cooking and cleaning for 20 people. Her only respite from 21-hour work days was furtive short naps in the bathroom.228

Some women reported that their work hours increased during Ramadan. Domestic workers typically had to work later and wake earlier to prepare food so that their employers could eat their meals while the sun was down. Although they worked much of the night, workers received no compensatory time of rest during the day. Women workers reported experiencing sleep deprivation during the month of Ramadan as a result of the extended working hours. One woman said, “During the Nombi period (Ramadan), I had to work a lot, sometimes I had to stay awake all day and night.”229 Another woman said, “During the Ramadan, or the festival, which is a month long, I used to go to sleep at 2:30 a.m. and get up at 3:30 a.m.; I only had one hour’s sleep… I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. because during Ramadan they eat at 5:15 in the morning.”230 Ummu N. told us that work in Dubai increased during Ramadan. She said, “The Dubai work was harder, because I had to get up at 4 a.m. and until I finished work at 10 p.m. I did not have time to rest or sleep, and during the Festival [Ramadan] I could not sleep until 12 a.m…. During the fasting time, which is Ramadan, it is very difficult to work in Dubai. I had to prepare and get the food for males and females separately for them to break fast daily, so it was a lot of work for me.”231

Some domestic workers, particularly those whose responsibilities included childcare, were constantly on call, and their employers expected them to be available even in the middle of the night. One woman who worked in Kuwait told us, “I used to sleep with the baby. I had to take care of the baby always and do everything for the baby, including waking up in the middle of the night…I never had a day of rest in nine years.”232 Another domestic worker added, “[I was] up at 5:45 a.m., I went to sleep at 3:30 a.m. Even when I went to sleep at 3:30 a.m., if they wanted anything, they would knock on my door.”233 Another domestic worker who worked until 1 a.m. with no day off and no rest time told us, “[E]ven after I went to sleep the lady knocked on my door in the middle of the night and asked me to prepare a meal for Baba. Baba…didn’t sleep and stayed up at night studying. I couldn’t ever sleep a little more in the mornings because there was a three-month-old baby and she would put the baby in my room at 6 a.m. sharp.”234

In some cases, employers did not permit domestic workers to rest even when they became ill or were injured on the job. One woman who worked in Abu Dhabi, UAE, said, “Whenever I fell ill the employer started scolding me that ‘You have come here to work, not rest, so work.’ And whenever I requested to see a doctor [the employers] refused.”235 In another case, Dammayanthi K. told us her employer denied her leave to see a doctor when she was injured on the job: “While I was cooking I also had to look after the baby. I was frying something and looking after the child at the same time, and the boiling hot oil went into my eyes… [F]or six days my eyes were red… I asked her to take me to the doctor, but she said I have to finish work—I had to finish ironing 21 family members’ clothes—and she said I don’t have time to go to the doctor. I was never allowed to see a doctor.”236

Human Rights watch documented cases in which domestic workers had to work in multiple houses, performing the same duties for two to eight households for no additional pay. One woman’s employer in Lebanon sent her to work in each of her seven grown children’s homes in addition to her own. 237 Another woman said that at the beginning of her contract period in Lebanon, “The lady would tell me to finish my work as soon as possible, and she brought me to her sister’s house and made me work there…. I worked in four different houses without any extra pay. I had to be very quick.”238

Food Deprivation and Inadequate Living Conditions

I was not fed well. They locked everything in the cupboards…. She only gave me rice once daily. She didn’t provide breakfast or dinner. She locked all the cupboards and locked the food in her bedroom.239

—Manaranjani S., age 35, a former domestic worker in Abu Dhabi, UAE

My second employer only gave me a place to sleep under the staircase like a dog. I am not a dog, I am a human being.240

—Asanthika W., age 42, a former domestic worker in Saudi Arabia

Many domestic workers reported that their employers denied them adequate food or provided substandard living accommodations. Domestic workers’ contracts generally stipulate that employers must provide food and adequate accommodations without charge.

Domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed reported that their employers deprived them of food, in some cases providing spoiled food, inedible leftover food, tiny portions of rice or bread, or only one meal per day. Some employers denied hungry domestic workers’ requests for additional food, and several women said that their employers locked the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets. Several women reported that their employers punished them for complaining of their working conditions by denying food, sometimes for days at a time. In some cases, women workers lost weight as a result of food deprivation. In one case, a domestic worker said she lost eight kilos [17.6 pounds] in three months because of food deprivation.241

Workers said that food deprivation was especially difficult to endure because of the heavy workload and long work hours. One domestic worker told Human Rights Watch that her employer in Saudi Arabia provided only one meal a day. She said, “She wasn’t feeding me, I was starving…. They didn’t give me enough food. They just locked everything up…. I was working very hard and just eating one meal at evening. I was…working very hard for them. But why didn’t she think to give me the rice that was going in the garbage? I was as hungry as she was. I washed her underwear [soiled] from periods with my two hands. She didn’t even think of feeding me.”242

Another woman complained that her employers in Saudi Arabia provided insufficient food, telling us, “There was no breakfast, just one plain tea. I’d be given the leftover rice, the burnt part left on the cooker. Only at night, I would get some roti [a pita-like bread].”243 One domestic worker said of her employers in Kuwait, “They didn’t give me food. I was given breakfast in the afternoon—roti. Just one roti. The lunch: after they finished eating, if there was anything left over they would give it to me, otherwise I had to starve…. Everything was there, but it was locked up and I wasn’t allowed to have anything. Dinner was the same—if there were leftovers then I could eat.”244 Sithiraliya M., who had to purify salt water to drink because her employers denied her water, told us that because her employers provided her and the Sri Lankan driver with spoiled food and only quarter-portions of roti for lunch, she resorted to eating food out of the garbage.245

Several women workers told Human Rights Watch they had to steal food, or eat food surreptitiously provided by sympathetic neighbors or relatives of their employers, and secretly ate in the bathroom to sustain themselves. One worker told us of her experience in Kuwait, “[My employer] did not check me whether I ate… I used to steal food to eat. I cannot work without eating. She did not give me any food, so whatever food was left over I had to find my way to eat it.”246 In another case, Sepalika S. told us, “In Lebanon [my employer] did not give me anything to eat or drink, so I stole food and ate. They have a lot…of food items, but they did not give me any of it. I complained once to a maid who worked downstairs in Baba’s mother’s house…that I was not getting any food, then Baba’s mother came to know I was not getting any food so she gave me food in secret. So I had to stay in the toilet and have my meal, for four months.”247

More than 25 percent of the domestic workers that Human Rights Watch interviewed were not provided adequate living quarters and had to sleep under stairs, in hallways, on living room floors, or in common living quarters. Three domestic workers reported that they had to store their belongings outdoors. In some cases, workers were not provided with a mattress, and had to sleep on the bare floor or on a thin mat they considered inadequate.

Many domestic workers did not have accommodations of their own, and shared their living quarters with an employer or the employer’s children. One woman said that in Dubai, UAE, “I used to sleep in a big living room with the family, men separate and women separate. I shared space with four daughters. They did not have a separate space for me and I kept my clothes outdoors.”248 Another domestic worker similarly told us, “In Saudi Arabia I did not have a separate room, I slept with the children. In Saudi Arabia I did not have even a cupboard to keep my clothes so I kept my clothes in a bag and took it when I needed it. The children used to sleep on the bed and in the same room I put a mattress on the floor and slept.”249

Several women slept in windowless spaces under stairwells or in storage rooms. Malini S. said, “I had a separate room but it was like a storeroom. I slept on the floor with a bed sheet. The room was not so great, it was like a dungeon. During the summer, I couldn’t stay inside.”250 Sasindi O. slept in corridors at two different places of employment in Saudi Arabia. She told Human Rights Watch, “I slept in a little space with a little pillow and a blanket on the floor. It was not actually a room, there were two doors. I locked them and slept inside. It was not comfortable. The children would walk though. It was…[between] two flats.”251 Working for another employer in Saudi Arabia, Sasindi O.’s living accommodations did not improve: “I slept in the corridor there. They gave me a small mattress to sleep, but it wasn’t big enough. I saw an old mattress that was big enough for me, but they threw it away and didn’t give it to me. There was no room for me; I put my bag outside of the house. If I had any rest time, I had to rest in the latrine. They didn’t allow me to come to the corridor to sit.”252

Confiscation of Passports, Forced Confinement, and Restricted Communication

I was not allowed to go out for anything…I was not allowed to read newspapers, talk to my friends and family…and whenever I listened to the radio she shouted at me and told me to turn it off. I was never allowed out, not a single day. I was allowed to take out the garbage only. I saw sun only when I went out to put the clothes out to dry. I had a prison life. The walls were very high.253

—Nirmali C., age 28, a domestic worker who worked in Kuwait for over two years

The majority of domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed confronted restrictions on their freedom of movement and their communication with others, including their families. Employers forbade them from leaving their places of employment unaccompanied and limited their ability to communicate with their family members, neighbors, and, in some cases, labor agents and embassies.

All domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed reported that employers confiscated their passports upon arrival in their countries of employment and withheld the passports until they departed the country. One domestic worker who had worked for three different employers in Lebanon said, “All three of my employers withheld my passport. It’s a system, not only for me. As soon as we arrive at the airport, the passport is taken by the employer and we don’t see the passport again until the day we leave.”254 Another domestic worker said of her experience in Kuwait, “As soon as I arrived they took my passport away from me, and the next time I saw the passport was when I departed for the airport. Madam kept my passport.”255 The president of Sri Lanka’s Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies (ALFEA) acknowledged that employers’ confiscation and withholding of passports is a widespread practice. He verified that “the sponsor—the employer—keeps the passport after they go [abroad].”256

Two recent surveys by the Caritas Lebanon Migrants Center and the American University in Cairo show that Lebanese employers believe it is their right to confiscate domestic workers’ passports and that the overwhelming majority do so. According to a 2005 telephone survey of 601 Lebanese employers by the Caritas Lebanon Migrants Center, 91 percent of those interviewed claimed that it is their right to retain the domestic worker’s passport.257 A separate 2005 survey in Lebanon of 458 domestic workers by the American University in Cairo found that only 1 percent of those living with their employers held their own passports.258

The Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (Migrant Workers Convention) states, “It shall be unlawful for anyone, other than a public official duly authorized by law, to confiscate...identity documents, documents authorizing entry to or stay, residence or establishment in the national territory or work permits.”259 Although Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE are not a party to the Migrant Workers Convention, it is illegal for employers to confiscate workers’ identity documents in the UAE and Lebanon.260 In practice, these legal protections do not stop employers and labor agents from routinely confiscating and withholding domestic workers’ passports and work permits.

Employers attempted to restrict women workers’ freedom of movement in other ways. Many domestic workers reported that they were unable to leave the household where they worked for any reason other than to take out the trash. Some were only permitted to leave if they were accompanied by their employer or a driver, and in some cases, employers locked domestic workers inside when they went out. Some employers placed extreme limitations on domestic workers’ freedom of movement, such that they were not permitted to open a window or door. A 54-year-old woman who had 10 years of experience working abroad in the Middle East told Human Rights Watch, “Throughout my journey five times, I did not have any freedom to move out of the house where I was. I should have been given the opportunity to go out.”261 Another repeat migrant domestic worker who had worked in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait said, “[In Lebanon] I had no freedom to leave; day or night, when they went out, they locked the house and took the key with them, and I had to stay inside. Saudi Arabia was also similar. Kuwait, they didn’t lock [the doors] because someone was always in the house if someone went out.”262

Several women workers likened their confinement in their workplace to imprisonment.  One woman said of her experience in Saudi Arabia, “I had no freedom to leave. They locked the doors when they left and I was inside until they came back. It was a prison life for me.”263 Another domestic worker said, “[T]hey didn’t let us go out to go shopping or take a walk…. We were servants, so they treated us like that…. In Saudi, I was always in the house. It was like a prison, I want [to] get rid of that.”264 Some domestic workers had to jump from an upper-story window in order to escape employers who locked them inside. Ponnama S. had to jump from the roof to escape her physically abusive employers: “They always locked me inside with the key. I went up and jumped. I couldn’t bear the pain. It was a two-story house. On the roof, there was a small gap, I was able to come out.”265

Only a few of the domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed were permitted to leave the workplace unaccompanied. Those who were permitted to leave the workplace only in the company of an employer or the driver reported that this limitation on their freedom caused them hardship. One woman poignantly explained of her experience in Kuwait:

I was even accompanied to the shopping market. I would go with the driver and I had to sit in the car and tell him what to buy. Sometimes when I needed underwear because I ran out of underwear, I couldn’t ask the driver because he’s a male. I really felt ashamed to ask him. One day the employer gave me some cloths to throw in the garbage. I kept these cloth rags and cut them to wear as panties. One day she saw me wearing this and asked why. I told her I had no panties. Even then she didn’t give me any. Sometimes she would check my room to make sure I hadn’t stolen her daughter’s underwear.266

Employers also restricted domestic workers’ communication with family members, other domestic workers, labor agents, and their embassies. Human Rights Watch interviewed many domestic workers who had limited ability to make or receive telephone calls, or to write or receive letters. Some of these domestic workers reported that they were not permitted any contact at all with family members. They could not send or receive any letters or phone calls to or from family members. Some workers were not even permitted to contact their families after the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 to learn whether they had survived. Some domestic workers also reported that their employers would not allow them to read newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television. Some employers monitored and censored the mail that domestic workers sent or received.

For example, a mother of two daughters told Human Rights Watch, “I was homesick those two years; [the lady employer] didn’t allow me to receive a phone call or listen to my daughters’ voice. The first time I wrote letters and gave them to the employer, but she didn’t post them.”267 A 26-year-old who returned to Sri Lanka on the day Human Rights Watch interviewed her was crying as she told us, “I received only two letters from my family this whole year, and when I wanted to talk with them [by phone], my employer, she only gave me four riyals [US$1]; it’s not enough to speak…. I was never allowed outside, I was never allowed to speak to other maids… I have three babies. I was not able to speak to them for this whole year…. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone. They said, ‘We never allow you to speak to the other maids because they will make your mind dirty.’”268 Another domestic worker said, “I wanted to call my family, to write letters… They told me, ‘For two years, you will have no contact with your family.’ My employer said, ‘When you come to work in Saudi Arabia, you have to forget about your family.’”269

Employers’ stated rationale for restricting women workers’ communication was to limit the likelihood of their leaving before they had completed their two- to three-year contract period. One domestic worker said of her employer in Kuwait, “She told me that she has paid money to get me as a maid for two years, so she can’t allow me to receive calls or letters.”270 In practice, these restrictions limited domestic workers’ ability to contact their labor agents or embassies when they experienced abuses.

Prohibitions on Returning Home

I asked Baba to either pay my salary or give me my passport to go home. He refused to pay my salary and he refused to give me my passport, and he…kicked me on my stomach and he hit me on my back and I fainted…. When I regained consciousness I started crying and asked him to send me home to my mother. Baba scolded me and said “I will not send you back to Sri Lanka, and I will not hand over your passport to you and you have to stay here.”271

—Ummu A., age 24, about her experience as a domestic worker in Kuwait

Abusing their power over migrant workers, many employers or labor agents prevented domestic workers from leaving their jobs to return to Sri Lanka, in some cases even after their contract period had concluded. In most of these cases, the combination of several abuses—forced confinement, restricted communication, and confiscation of passports—created a situation in which domestic workers were unable to return to Sri Lanka when they wanted to do so. In several instances, Sri Lankan women we spoke with had been unable to return home to check on their families after the December 2004 tsunami or despite armed conflict in Lebanon in 2006.

Because women domestic workers are often confined to their workplaces with limited ability to communicate with others, they are particularly at risk of being prevented from returning to their country, even in normal circumstances, at the end of their contracts. In 2005, the SLBFE recorded 667 complaints from women migrant workers that their employers did not send them back to Sri Lanka after completion of their contract, while it received 44 such complaints from male migrant workers, who have at least the same access to complaint mechanisms as women.272

Human Rights Watch documented cases in which employers and labor agents prohibited domestic workers from returning to Sri Lanka after they learned of the deaths of children, siblings, and parents, and wished to return to Sri Lanka to attend the funerals. In one case, a domestic worker’s employer and labor agency did not permit her to return to Sri Lanka when she learned her husband had cancer; he died one month after she was permitted to return home.273 Several domestic workers reported that their employers forbade them from returning to Sri Lanka after close family members were killed in the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Koormadhi N., who had worked as a domestic worker for the same family in Abu Dhabi, UAE, for 16 years, told Human Rights Watch that her employers would not let her return to Sri Lanka when her daughter, sisters, and niece were killed in the tsunami. She said,

My daughter died in the tsunami. I have no other children. She was 13 years old. I was in Abu Dhabi when the tsunami hit…. I asked [my employers] to go home to Sri Lanka and the lady refused and said that, “If your child is dead, you have to put it in a kabar [grave],” which means put the dead body under ground. She said, “Why do you have to go?” I argued with that lady but…she did not want me to go…. When I said that I want to go home, the lady told me, “Your child is dead, why do you want to go home now, are you a doctor?”274

Koormadhi N. eventually collected money from the household’s driver and cook to pay for a plane ticket, and returned to Sri Lanka. Her employer never returned her confiscated passport.

Meena P. said that she was unable to return to Sri Lanka in part because her employers in Saudi Arabia limited her ability to contact her family or to leave the house where she worked. Unable to return to Sri Lanka, she endured physical and sexual abuse by her employer’s son and his friend for one year and three months, and was not paid for one year’s work:

I was always asking to go home. I asked [Mama] for about four to five months to go home before I left. When I kept saying that I want to go home Mama and Baba said, ‘That can’t be done’…. After I told the lady [employer] my problems I stayed there for four or five months…. [I did not try to escape because] I was not allowed to go out, even to take out garbage. I was not allowed to make or receive calls. Whenever there was a Sri Lankan call she used to cut the line. And she wouldn’t post my letters.275

Denial of women workers’ appeals to return home had particularly acute consequences during the July 2006 war in Lebanon. Domestic workers reported that during the July 2006 war, their employers refused to return their passports or allow them to leave their jobs and return to Sri Lanka. Many told us they ran away from their employers and were unable to recover their passports, unpaid wages, or personal belongings. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), which evacuated 5,381 Sri Lankan migrant workers from Lebanon, over 93 percent of whom were women migrant workers,276 reported that, “At least half of those being helped are escaping without their papers or salaries from employers who don’t want to let them go. Many more are still trying to get away.”277

A Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said that of about 85,000 Sri Lankan domestic workers in Lebanon at the time of the war, only 6,272 were repatriated to Sri Lanka.278 Many could not leave simply because wartime conditions and shortages of transport made travel within and out of Lebanon difficult, expensive, and often hazardous.  While the number of Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers actively prevented by their employers from fleeing Lebanon during the conflict is unknown, the SLBFE reported that five Sri Lankan women workers were known to have died during the fighting.279 Some women told us they watched the war at close range—one saw the building next door collapse—but were unable to return to Sri Lanka when they feared for their safety.

Upeksha R., age 22, told us, “They didn’t allow me to come home during the war. My husband called me to come home again and again... My employers said, ‘If we are going to die, you are going to be with us, you can’t go to Sri Lanka’… We were in a war area in Beirut. I was afraid and I thought I’d never see Sri Lanka again.”280 Upeksha R. eventually ran away to the Sri Lankan embassy without her personal effects. Priyanthika R.’s employers would not allow her to return to Sri Lanka: “I was scared, I wanted to protect my life, I wanted to come back to Sri Lanka, I ran away from that house. My employers said ‘You have to stay here for the contract period. If we are going to die, you must be with us.’ At 5 a.m., I ran away and walked many miles.”281

When employers prevent domestic workers from returning home, domestic workers often become trapped in situations of forced labor.

Forced Labor

Human Rights Watch documented 23 cases in which the range of abuses alleged—forced confinement, restricted communication, confiscation of passports, withholding of salary, abuse, high debts, and work under threat of detention or deportation—amounted to forced labor. Under international law, forced labor is work or service extracted under the menace of penalty and without consent.282 In the cases of 23 women domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed for this report, employers and labor agents engaged in practices that created a menace of penalties, including overt or implied threats to impose fines on a domestic worker that were never stipulated in her contract, to physically harm her if she did not continue working, to fail to pay withheld wages if a domestic worker did not complete her contract, or to denounce her to authorities for immigration or criminal sanction. In all of these 23 cases, the circumstances the women described also meet the ILO definition of involuntary work. These workers’ employers confined them in the workplace, confiscated their passports and work permits, or withheld their salary. Some workers’ labor agents and subagents deceived them about their working conditions at the time of recruitment, or labor agents threatened to charge inflated fees for early release from a contract or for a transfer of employment.

Migrant domestic workers are particularly at risk of becoming trapped in forced labor because of the prevalence of abusive recruitment and employment practices. In several cases Human Rights Watch documented, employers’ practice of withholding domestic workers’ wages created a situation of forced labor when the worker wanted to leave her job but her employer threatened not to pay the withheld wages if she left the job. For example, 26-year-old Arivudai H. was working for a family of four in Lebanon when the July 2006 war in Lebanon began. She had been working there for over two years, but her employer had paid only one month’s wages. Arivudai H. told Human Rights Watch,

The lady [employer] told me that she would give my salary when I went home. When the war started she did not let me go back home. She paid me only US$100, that was an initial payment to me. After that she told me she would collect all the money and give it to me when I went home, but she did not give it to me… I went in June 2004, so I got the first payment [of $100] in June, but no more salary after that…. I was staying in Beirut and I heard the noise of shelling and bombing. I couldn’t sleep and I asked the lady [employer] whether I could go home and she refused. She said not to go, if I go she will not pay my salary. She told me that I don’t have to worry about anything because this place is safe, but I could not fall asleep because of the bombing.283

Arivudai H. eventually ran away from her employer, who had withheld her passport throughout her period of employment. She never recovered her passport or the two years of wages that were owed to her.

The situation of Rohini T., interviewed by Human Rights Watch at the Sri Lankan embassy in Riyadh, rose to the level of forced labor. Although she wished to leave her job in Saudi Arabia after giving birth there, her employers prohibited her from leaving and she had been threatened that if she fled, she would not be paid the four years’ unpaid wages owed to her. The nearly US$5,120 in back wages her employer owed her, in combination with the over US$400 debt she incurred to cover recruitment fees, created a menace of penalties. She said,

I came in February 2002. It has been five years. I have only received one year’s salary. I was pregnant when I came… I worked for four months, then had the baby. After that, I went right back to work. I was practically begging for them to send me back to Sri Lanka, but they would not release me…. I didn’t have a riyal, I was waiting for my salary and ticket…. I was taking care of the child but I had to work. Milk powder, shirt, I bought out of the one year salary they had given me. I woke up at 5 a.m. and sent the kids to school. There were 11 kids at home, it was a three-story building. I had nothing called free time, the small rest time I had I used to feed the baby.

I have to go to Sri Lanka. I have no money, how can I take the child and…go back to Sri Lanka?... All I want is to go to Sri Lanka. I have a debt in Sri Lanka. My children have no money. It’s a 45,000 rupee [US$400] debt.”284

After five years working for the same employer, Rohini T. escaped to the Sri Lankan embassy without her personal belongings. At the time Human Rights Watch interviewed her, she had not recovered the four years’ wages owed to her.

For some workers, the threat of financial penalty in the form of having to pay for their return air ticket may create a situation of forced labor when the domestic worker’s work becomes involuntary. It is common practice, and often stipulated in the contract, that employers must pay domestic workers’ return tickets only if workers complete their contract period, or after two years of work. Some workers told Human Rights Watch that they endured abuse and continued working until they completed the contract period because if they discontinued work earlier, they would have to pay their own airfare home, equivalent to two to four months’ salary. Soida W.’s employer in Kuwait refused to release her even after completion of her contract, and threatened to withhold payment of her air ticket if she stopped working:

I was admitted to the hospital because I had chest pain, and after that the doctor advised the employer that I had not had enough rest and to try to send me back home as soon as possible…. I told the lady employer…send me back home… She refused to send me back. She said I had to finish the whole three years, and I had just finished eight months of the last year. I signed a contract in Colombo for two years. She told me she would not give me a ticket to come back until [I had worked for] three years…. I was wondering whether she would send me back one day or whether she would continue to keep me in that house forever and not allow me to come back.”285

Two months after she demanded to return to Sri Lanka, Soida W. went on hunger strike in protest. On the seventh day of her strike, her employer purchased a return ticket for her. In other cases, labor agents pressure workers to stay at work by threatening to impose financial penalties should they leave their jobs early. For example, Manaranjani S. endured harsh conditions in Abu Dhabi—including food deprivation and an unusually heavy workload—because the agency threatened to penalize her if she changed employers or returned to Sri Lanka before she completed three months of work: “My contract was for two-and-a-half years. If I left my job within three months of arriving in Abu Dhabi they said I’d have to pay 80,000 rupees [US$710]…to the agent in Abu Dhabi… This is one of the reasons why I stayed for more than three months.”286

In several cases, domestic workers became trapped in situations of forced labor when their employers would not allow them to leave their jobs until they had reimbursed the employer for the recruitment fee, which ranges from US$750-1,600 in Saudi Arabia, US$1,000-1,100 in Kuwait and Lebanon, and US$450-1,100 in the UAE.287 Sobani D.’s employer in Kuwait demanded payment of US$1,020 if she did not complete her contract:

She told me that she has paid money to get me as a maid for two years…she paid 250 Kuwaiti dinars [US$888] for me. She said she [also] paid 30 dinars [US$107] for my visa, and she gave me an identity card, and she told me she paid 15 dinars [US$53] for that. She said if I want to go [home to Sri Lanka] I have to settle all this money [about US$1,047] with her. I told her that I also paid money to an agent to be her maid…. She said, “Give me that money and you can go home to Sri Lanka and do whatever you want”…she told me if I didn’t give her any money then she wouldn’t let me come home.288

Sobani D.’s employer withheld her passport, denied her use of the telephone to call the labor agent, and did not permit her to leave the house. Noor F. told Human Rights Watch that after her employer beat her and she asked to be returned to the agency, “[Baba] told me, ‘We have paid money to the agency to get you as our maid, and when you pay me that money I will return you.’”289

In other cases, employers used physical abuse, threats of physical abuse, or threats of reporting domestic workers to the authorities, to force them to continue to work. One woman worker told us, “I stayed there because they scared me and they beat me; that’s why I stayed. Sometimes they said, ‘We will complain to the agency about you. Kuwait is my country, I can call the police [on you].’”290 Another domestic worker told us that when she wanted to leave Lebanon because of the verbal and physical abuse and restrictions on her religion she endured at work, her employer leveled several threats at her:

I told [the female employer] that I am going to go home. She told me the earlier maid put her fingers in the door and got hurt, and said the same may happen to me. I got really scared. She also threatened to bring me to the police; I said “fine” because I haven’t done anything wrong. She also told me she would have to take money from me because she gave money to the agent for me but I know I didn’t owe her anything.291

Employers’ practice of withholding migrant workers’ passports can contribute to the creation of a situation of forced labor. As quoted in a UAE newspaper, Aref Mirza, director of the legal department of the UAE’s Ministry of Labour, acknowledged that, “’Retaining workers’ passports amounts to forcible work in violation of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention on the Abolition of Forced Labour, to which the UAE is a signatory.’”292 Some of the domestic workers Human Rights Watch interviewed endured abusive work conditions because they feared the consequences of running away without their passports. Several told Human Rights Watch that they feared they would be arrested or detained if authorities caught them without their passports. A 24-year-old who worked as a domestic worker in Dubai, UAE, said:

When [the boss] hit me I asked him to give me my passport so I could go home, but he refused… I had already worked there for about five months. He refused to give me my passport and told me he would not allow me to…leave that place before two years... So I stayed for two years and finished out my contract, then I went home…. I did not have any other options and I did not want to run away and get caught by the police and have more problems. I went for the 12-day training [in Sri Lanka], and during that training [the trainers said] if you try to run away and get caught by police you will have to face more problems.293

The ILO Convention on Forced Labor, No. 29, which Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE have ratified, defines forced labor as, “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”294 The ILO has clarified the meaning of these two key elements of forced labor: (1) the work is exacted under menace of any penalty and (2) is undertaken involuntarily. The ILO has elaborated a list of elements which can qualify as a menace of penalty and thus point to a situation of forced labor. A number of domestic workers interviewed for this report experienced two or more of these elements in combination:

  1. Physical or sexual violence: According to the ILO, employers or labor agents in some cases exact forced labor from workers “by the threat and application of physical or sexual violence” against a worker or close associates .295
  2. Restriction of movement of the worker: The ILO noted, “A common means by which labour is extracted by duress from workers is through their confinement. The workers are locked into the workplace or their movement is restricted to a very limited area, often with the objectives of preventing contact with the host communities.”296
  3. Debt bondage/bonded labor: Occurs when a worker works partly or exclusively to pay off a debt that may be incurred during the process of recruitment, and “the debt is perpetuated because on the one hand, the work or services provided are undervalued and on the other hand, the employer may provide food and accommodation at such inflated prices that it is extremely difficult for the worker to escape from debt.”297
  4. Withholding wages, refusing to pay the worker at all, and other financial penalties: This includes situations in which workers work in the expectation of payment but the employer withholds sums from the worker’s wages.298
  5. Retention of passports and identity documents: According to the ILO, because a worker is rendered unable to prove identity or nationality, the employer’s withholding of a worker’s passport and/or identity documents “often creates sufficient fear that the workers feel they are obliged to submit to the employer.”299
  6. Threat of denunciation to the authorities: Includes the threat of denunciation to authorities such as police or immigration officials, or threat of deportation, and may not require “that the menaces relate to action to be taken by the person making the demand.”300
  7. Dismissal from current employment or exclusion from future employment.301
  8. Removal of rights or privileges: The “menace of any penalty” not only includes the threat of penal sanctions, “but might take the form also of a loss of rights or privileges.”302

To determine that work is undertaken involuntarily, the ILO considers not only whether deception or fraud was used to obtain consent, but also external constraints, indirect coercion, and the possibility of revoking freely given consent.303 According to the ILO supervisory bodies, a worker’s initial, seemingly voluntary consent to work is considered involuntary “[w]here migrant workers were induced by deceit, false promises and retention of identity documents or force to remain at the disposal of an employer.”304 The ILO notes that it is possible for workers to revoke freely given consent: “[M]any victims enter forced labour situations initially of their own accord…only to discover later that they are not free to withdraw their labour.”305 Therefore, the ILO concludes, because the workers’ right to free choice of employment is inalienable,306 “a restriction on leaving a job, even when the worker freely agreed to enter it, can be considered forced labour.”307 According to the ILO, examples of lack of consent to, or the involuntary nature of, work include physical confinement in the work location, psychological compulsion (such as an order to work backed up by a credible threat of penalty), induced indebtedness (by falsification of accounts, inflated prices, excessive interest charges, etc.), deception or false promises about types and terms of work, withholding and non-payment of wages, and retention of identity documents or other valuable personal possessions.308

Forced labor is illegal under Sri Lankan law309 and the penal codes of UAE, Kuwait, and Lebanon prohibit behavior that constitutes forced labor.310 Saudi Arabia punishes forced labor through a provision in its labor code.311

Exploitative Practices by Labor Agents in the Countries of Employment

[The lady employer] handed me over to a Muslim agent over there and those guys beat me up with a belt… There was a Muslim lady [at the agency] who…used her hands and hit me on the cheeks. I was very fragile… They told me that I had to stay with the employer for three months, and only after three months I could run away. But I didn’t know how to run away… While I was in the agency I asked them to get me a better employer for me to work longer, but they didn’t do that….

When I went to the agent for a second time,…the agents beat me up again, with a belt. The agents beat me up and I started passing blood in my urine. They used a belt. The agents locked me up in a room for five days.312

—Chandrika H., age 27, about her experience as a domestic worker in Dubai, UAE

In an alarming number of cases, domestic workers seeking the labor agent’s intervention to resolve problems or a transfer to a better employer led to even greater abuse. Generally, when domestic workers experience unacceptable working conditions or other abuse in the workplace, they seek assistance from labor agents based in their countries of employment. Some labor agents provided needed help, while others beat and threatened domestic workers when they fled their employers and sought assistance. Human Rights Watch also documented cases in which labor agents returned women to their abusive employers using force or duress. Labor agents’ coercive practices to keep women in their employment placements also included the charging of inflated fees to transfer employers. In many of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch, the labor agents who directly threatened or physically abused domestic workers were Sri Lankan agents based at the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Lebanese, or UAE labor agencies.

The recruitment fee structure is a contributing factor to this physical abuse, and can lead to situations of forced labor. During the first three months of employment, understood to be a trial period, if the employer or the domestic worker terminates the arrangement, is pregnant, or has a medical problem, the agency must either provide a replacement domestic worker free of charge or refund the recruitment fee to the employer.313 Agencies frequently advertise this three-month “guarantee” to employers. A labor agent said, “After 91 days the agency has no obligation to the employer; the employer has to pay again to get a new domestic worker.”314

According to labor agents, labor agents have no comparable obligation to provide domestic workers with a new employer. One labor agent told Human Rights Watch, “If the woman has a problem…[t]here is no obligation ever to find the housemaid a new employer.”315 Many domestic workers told Human Rights Watch that labor agents in their countries of employment dismissed their requests to change employers, sometimes even when workers were experiencing severe abuse. Soma W. recalls, “After going [to Kuwait]…I had problems with the first employer…. I called the agency and when I spoke with the agent he told me to shut up and keep quiet. He told me to stay there for three months, and he would take care of my matter afterwards. They said, ‘Stay three months,’ and when I called for the second time and asked they said, ‘Stay for six months,’ then after eight months they said, ‘Try to manage for a year.’ I was at the first house for eight months. When I called the agent and asked for them to release me, the employer opposed and said that I was her maid and belonged to her.”316 A labor agent implicitly acknowledged such practices, attempting to justify them as driven by market forces: “This is a business. We have to supply according to [the Middle Eastern employers’] expectations…. In their country [employers] can do whatever they want.”317

Because the fees employers pay labor agents range between US$450-1,600,318 labor agents have a strong financial incentive to ensure that domestic workers continue working for even abusive employers during this trial period. In some cases, this financial incentive is the result of economic pressure on economically fragile small labor agencies. According to Michele Gamburd, an anthropologist who has studied the Sri Lankan migrant labor recruitment industry, if several domestic workers were to return to Sri Lanka in a short period, the cost of reimbursing employers could bankrupt a small labor agency.319 In other cases, agents’ motives are profit-driven. A labor agent who has recruited Sri Lankan women to work as domestic workers in the Middle East for over 30 years told Human Rights Watch that labor agents are earning higher profits presently because it is more difficult for domestic workers to run away from employers during the three-month probationary period.320

Domestic workers described to Human Rights Watch their labor agents’ efforts to coerce them to continue working for their employer until they had completed three months’ work, even when domestic workers complained of abuse. A woman who had been drugged and raped by airport personnel in the Sri Lankan airport immediately before departure told Human Rights Watch that she appealed to a labor agent in Kuwait for assistance to return to Sri Lanka immediately: “[Because of the airport attack] I started to bleed and I was vomiting frequently…. In the agency the agent assaulted me…, saying that I was lying. He used his hands and slapped me on the cheeks, twice or thrice…. The agent was not very helpful and told me to stay in Kuwait and he shouted at me.”321 Another domestic worker said that a Sri Lankan agent in Abu Dhabi told her she had to pay a staggering 80,000 rupees penalty [US$710] if she changed employers or returned to Sri Lanka before completing three months of work for an abusive employer.322

Even after the three-month probationary period, domestic workers reported that labor agents used coercive tactics to compel them to continue working for their employers. For example, labor agents sometimes threaten to denounce domestic workers to the authorities when they want to change employers or return to Sri Lanka. Padma S., an 18-year-old who endured physical and sexual abuse in Saudi Arabia, told us that after she begged her employer to return her to Sri Lanka, her employer took her to a labor agency: “There was a Sri Lankan there who told me I couldn’t leave, I had to stay working there, otherwise I would be in prison for two years.”323 Hanifa S. said of her experience in Dubai, “I had to stay two years. The agency scared me, they said ‘If you don’t stay two years, we will beat you and scold you’…. I thought, ‘How can I return to Sri Lanka?’…. I tried many times [to convince the agency] but I was too scared and I stayed.”324 These threats can constitute a “menace of penalty,” contributing to a situation of forced labor.

Labor agents also committed physical abuse to compel domestic workers to continue working for an employer, or as punishment for perceived lapses in their work performance. A domestic worker who was unable to perform her duties in Saudi Arabia because of an operation she underwent before migrating appealed to the labor agent, who returned her to the employer against her wishes. She said, “If the employer is not happy, they send us back to the agent. The agent hit me. Every day he repeatedly hit us. This scar below my eyes is from the agent…. He hit me with his hand and with a stick, on my legs also.”325 When Ummu A.’s employer in Kuwait beat her with the rubber tube of the vacuum cleaner, she asked the labor agent to find her a new employer: “The agent told me to go back and work there [with the first employer]… I cried and asked the agent to find me another house to work, but he refused and told me to go back with Baba. I did not have any other options because the agent wanted me to go with Baba.”326 When Ummu A. later returned to the agency, the agents beat her. She recalls, “When I went to the agency this time they took me to a room and beat me up, saying, ‘Why are you not staying anywhere, why are you coming back?’”327

In some cases labor agents charged domestic workers inflated fees for transferring employment to a different employer. One domestic worker said that in Abu Dhabi, “The agent charged me 500 dirhams [US$136] to change the employer’s name on my visa... He never showed it to me, but he said if he didn’t change the name of the employer I couldn’t work for the second employer. He told me they won’t accept you as an employee and you will be arrested by the police.”328

In several cases, labor agents required domestic workers to work without a salary for a certain period, usually several months, in return for an air ticket to Sri Lanka. One domestic worker who had a one-year contract to work in Lebanon said, “After one year, I said I want to go to Sri Lanka, [the agents] said okay, but they scolded me a lot. When I planned to come to Sri Lanka, I had to wait for six months without a salary. I was working at the same house during those six months…my agency gave me the chance to return to Sri Lanka, so I had no salary [for those six months].”329 Another domestic worker who was raped and impregnated by her employer’s son told Human Rights Watch that the labor agent in Saudi Arabia forced her to work for him to cover the cost of her air ticket: “I told the kafeel [the agent], who was in charge of me, to come and take me away or else I would commit suicide. If he hadn’t come and taken me away I would have committed suicide.… The kafeel told me that, ‘Until I get you the ticket, work in this house.’ I wanted to come [home to Sri Lanka] earlier, but I did not have a chance. I worked for four months there, so he gave me one month’s salary in my hand, and bought me a ticket for three months’ salary [1,200 riyals, US$320].”330




148 Human Rights Watch interview with Indrani P., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 15, 2006.

149 Human Rights Watch interview with Krishnan S., Maskeliya, Sri Lanka, November 13, 2006.

150 Human Rights Watch interview with Kadhiroli S., Habaraduwa, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2006.

151 Human Rights Watch interview with Latha P., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 15, 2006.

152 Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2005, p. 61.

153 Human Rights Watch interview with Lelanthi Kumari, Legal Aid Commission, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 17, 2006.

154 Sri Lankan domestic workers often refer to their male employers as “Baba,” and their female employers as “Mama” or “Madam.”

155 Human Rights Watch interview with Sepalika S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.

156 Human Rights Watch interview with Sathi R., Panadura, Sri Lanka, November 15, 2006.

157 Domestic workers reported to Human Rights Watch that they typically worked 16-18 hours per day, some as many as 21 hours each day, seven days a week. See Section IV of this report, "Heavy Workload and Excessively Long Work Hours without Rest.”

158 Human Rights Watch interview with Al-Haj U.T.M. Anver, ALFEA, Colombo, Sri Lanka, October 31, 2006.

159 The minimum wage for Sri Lankan domestic workers was 550 dirhams [US$150] at the time Human Rights Watch conducted this research; it was raised to 600 dirhams [US$163] on September 1, 2007. Meeraj Rizvi, “Minimum Wage for Sri Lankan Domestic Help is Now in Force,” Khaleej Times (Dubai, UAE), July 11, 2005, http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2005/july/theuae_july266.xml (accessed September 6, 2007); Binsal Abdul  Kader, “Sri Lanka Hikes Wages of Maids,” Gulf News (Dubai, UAE), August 30, 2007,  http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/08/31/10150408.html (accessed September 6, 2007); “Higher Wages for UAE’s Lankan Maids,” Daily News (Colombo), September 1, 2007, http://www.dailynews.lk/2007/09/01/news22.asp (accessed September 6, 2007)..

160 Human Rights Watch interview with Al-Haj U.T.M. Anver, ALFEA, Colombo, Sri Lanka, October 31, 2006.

161 Contract for Recruiting Private Servants (Kuwait), put into effect October 1, 2006, para. 3.

162 Human Rights Watch interview with Amirthini L., Maskeliya, Sri Lanka, November 13, 2006.

163 ILO Convention No. 95 concerning the Protection of Wages, art. 2(2)-(3).

164 ILO Recommendation No. 85 concerning the Protection of Wages, adopted July 1, 1949, art. 4(b).

165 Human Rights Watch interview with retired labor agent, name withheld, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 18, 2006.

166 Human Rights Watch interview with Sasindi O., Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

167Ahmad Zakaria, “Domestics Transfer Ban Effective October 1,” Daily Star Kuwait Edition, August 26-27, 2006. The standardized contract’s provisions regarding repatriation costs replaces a November 2006 policy  approved by Kuwait’s National Assembly's Interior and Defence Committee that exempted employers ofrunaway domestic workers from paying the airfare for their repatriation back home. B. Izzak, “Employers of Runaways May be Let Off the Hook,” Kuwait Times, November 20, 2006.

168 Employment Agreement for Domestic Workers and Sponsors (UAE), put into effect April 1, 2007, arts. 3, 9.

169 Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Model Contract of Employment for Domestic Helpers from Sri Lanka in the Middle East Countries (1990), paras. 5, 10(a)-(c).

170 ILO Recommendation No. 86 concerning Migration for Employment (Revised 1949), adopted July 1, 1949, art. 26(1)(a). See also ILO Recommendation No. 100 concerning the Protection of Migrant Workers in Underdeveloped Countries and Territories, adopted June 22, 1955., art. 10(b). Although ILO recommendations are not subject to national ratification and therefore do not have the binding force of Conventions, they provide guidelines for ILO member states.

171 Human Rights Watch interview with Chitra G., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 6, 2006.

172 Human Rights Watch interview with Hinni M., Tihari, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

173 ILO Convention No. 95 concerning the Protection of Wages, art. 8(1).

174 Human Rights Watch interview with Kumari Indunil (real name used upon request), Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

175 Human Rights Watch interview with Krishnan S., Maskeliya, Sri Lanka, November 13, 2006.

176 Contract for Recruiting Private Servants (Kuwait), put into effect October 1, 2006, para. 3; Kader, “Sri Lanka Hikes Wages of Maids,” Gulf News; “Higher Wages for UAE’s Lankan Maids,” Daily News .

177 This calculation is based on monthly salaries domestic workers reported to Human Rights Watch (US$80-142), at 30 days per month, for 16-18 hours per day.

178 Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle, p.64.

179 Human Rights Watch interview with retired labor agent, name withheld, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 18, 2006. Saudi Arabia has a fixed exchange rate regime, and the Saudi Arabia riyal has been pegged at 3.75 riyals to the US dollar since 1986.

180 Using the Colombo Consumer Price Index to adjust for inflation, domestic workers’ 1992 salary of 400 riyals, which equaled 4,660 rupees in 1992, now would be worth 20,162 rupees in 2007. Domestic workers’ current 2007 salary of 400 riyals equals only 12,053 rupees.

181 Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle, p.248.

182 US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2006: Saudi Arabia,” March 6, 2007, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78862.htm (accessed June 1, 2007).

183 The UAE has not put in place a minimum wage, although its Labor Law No. 8 of 1980 requires the government to set a minimum wage. Federal Law No. 8 for 1980, On Regulation of Labor Relations, art. 63. The minimum wage for Sri Lankan domestic workers was 550 dirhams [US$150] until September 1, 2007, when it was raised to 600 dirhams. Rizvi, “Minimum Wage for Sri Lankan Domestic Help is Now in Force,” Khaleej Times ; Kader, “Sri Lanka Hikes Wages of Maids,” Gulf News; “Higher Wages for UAE’s Lankan Maids,” Daily News .

184 The minimum wage in Lebanon is 300,000 pounds monthly, about US$200, while Human Rights Watch research indicates that Sri Lankan domestic workers typically earn about US$100 per month. Décret no 8733 du 8 juillet 1996 fixant le salaire minimal officiel des employés et des ouvriers ainsi que le taux de cherté de vie, Argus de la Législation libanaise, 1996, Vol. 42, no 4 (July 8, 2006), pp. 5-6.

185 US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2006: Kuwait,” March 6, 2007, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78856.htm (accessed June 1, 2007).

186 Contract for Recruiting Private Servants (Kuwait), put into effect October 1, 2006, para. 3.

187 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, “Concluding Observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Kuwait,” E/C.12/1/Add.98, June 7, 2004, http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/E.C.12.1.Add.98.En?Opendocument (accessed May 30, 2007), para. 34.

188 Human Rights Watch interview with Nayanadini B., Rambe, Sri Lanka, November 5, 2006.

189 Human Rights Watch interview with Upeksha R., Vallalgude, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

190 Budget Speech 2007, “Stipulated Minimum Salaries for Overseas Employment,” para. 30, reproduced in Daily Mirror (Colombo), November 17, 2006, p. A17.

191 Human Rights Watch Interview with Jagath Wellawatta, SLBFE, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 16, 2006; “Hasty Decision on Migrant Workers,” Sunday Times (Colombo), March 11, 2007, http://sundaytimes.lk/070311/FinancialTimes/ft308.html (accessed September 6, 2007).

192 Sandun A. Jayasekera, “Govt. Negotiates Higher Wage for Housemaids,” Daily Mirror (Colombo), May 3, 2007, http://www.dailymirror.lk/2007/05/03/news/3.asp (accessed September 6, 2007).

193 Human Rights Watch interview with L.K. Ruhunage, SLBFE, Colombo, Sri Lanka, October 30, 2006.

194 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted December 18, 1979, G.A. res. 34/180, 34 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 46) at 193, U.N. Doc. A/34/46, entered into force September 3, 1981, art. 11(1)(d).

195 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), adopted December 16, 1966, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 49, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 993 U.N.T.S. 3, entered into force January 3, 1976, art. 7(a).

196 Article 2 of the ICESCR calls on states to ensure that the rights included in the Covenant are exercised without discrimination as to sex, and article 3 of the ICESCR requires states to ensure the equal right of women and men to the enjoyment of the rights in the Covenant.

197 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted December 10, 1948, G.A. Res. 217A(III), U.N. Doc. A/810 at 71 (1948), art. 23(2)-(3).

198 International Labour Conference, ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (ILO Declaration), 86th Session, June 18, 1998, 37 I.L.M. 1233 (1998), para 2(d).

199 The ILO Declaration states that “all Members, even if they have not ratified the Conventions in question, have an obligation arising from the very fact of membership in the Organization to respect, to promote and to realize, in good faith and in accordance with the Constitution, the principles concerning the fundamental rights which are the subject of those Conventions.” Non-discrimination is among the fundamental rights set out by the ILO. International Labour Conference, ILO Declaration, para. 2.

200 ILO Convention No. 100 concerning Equal Remuneration for Men and Women Workers for Work of Equal Value, adopted June 29, 1951, 165 U.N.T.S. 303, entered into force May 23, 1953, art. 2.

201 ILO Convention No. 111 concerning Discrimination in Respect to Employment and Occupation, adopted June 25, 1958, 362 U.N.T.S. 31, entered into force June 15, 1960, art. 2.

202 Human Rights Watch interview with Noor F., Attanagalla, Sri Lanka, November 8 , 2006.

203 Human Rights Watch interview with SLBFE official, Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 17, 2006.

204 Human Rights Watch interview with Selvakumari W., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.

205 Human Rights Watch interview with Vadivukarasi H., Talawakelle, Sri Lanka, November 12, 2006.

206 Human Rights Watch interview with Sevandhi R., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

207 Human Rights Watch interview with Ponnamma S., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 14, 2006.

208 Human Rights Watch interview with Lakmini J., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.

209  Ibid.

210 Human Rights Watch interview with Kumari Indunil (real name used upon request), Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

211 Human Rights Watch interview with Yuvani J., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

212 Human Rights Watch interview with Padma S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

213 Human Rights Watch interview with Kumari G., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 6, 2006.

214 Human Rights Watch interview with Chamali W., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 14, 2006.

215 Human Rights Watch interview with Meena P., Talawakelle, Sri Lanka, November 12, 2006.

216 Human Rights Watch interview with Selvakumari W., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.

217 Human Rights Watch interview with Sathi R., Panadura, Sri Lanka, November 15, 2006.

218 According to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, sexual harassment includes, “such unwelcome sexually determined behaviour as physical contact and advances, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography and sexual demand, whether by words or actions. Such conduct can be humiliating and may constitute a health and safety problem; it is discriminatory when the woman has reasonable grounds to believe that her objection would disadvantage her in connection with her employment, including recruitment and promotion, or when it creates a hostile working environment.” UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee), General Recommendation 19, Violence against Women (Eleventh session, 1992), Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, UN Doc. HRI\GEN\1\Rev.1 (1994), p. 84, paras. 17-18.

219 Human Rights Watch interview with Amanthi K., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

220 Human Rights Watch interview with Chamali W., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 14, 2006.

221 Human Rights Watch interview with Amanthi K., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

222 Human Rights Watch interview with Kumari Indunil (real name used upon request), Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

223 Human Rights Watch interview with Fathima S., Habaraduwa, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2006.

224 Human Rights Watch interview with Nimalka V., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.

225 Human Rights Watch interview with Manaranjani S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

226 Human Rights Watch interview with Hemanthi J., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 14, 2006.

227 Human Rights Watch interview with Meniki N., Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

228 Human Rights Watch interview with Noor F., Attanagalla, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

229 Human Rights Watch interview with Chandra Malkanthi, Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.

230 Human Rights Watch interview with Sepalika S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.

231 Human Rights Watch interview with Ummu N., Habaraduwa, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2006.

232 Human Rights Watch interview with Sanuthi P., Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

233 Human Rights Watch interview with Sobani D., Kandy, Sri Lanka, November 10, 2006.

234 Human Rights Watch interview with Ummu A., Attanagalla, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

235 Human Rights Watch interview with Manaranjani S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

236 Human Rights Watch interview with Dammayanthi K., Kandy, Sri Lanka, November 10, 2006.

237 Human Rights Watch interview with Meniki N., Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

238 Human Rights Watch interview with Sathi R., Panadura, Sri Lanka, November 15, 2006.

239 Human Rights Watch interview with Manaranjani S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

240 Human Rights Watch interview with Asanthika W., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.

241 Human Rights Watch interview with Thushari M., Panadura, Sri Lanka, November 15, 2006.

242 Human Rights Watch interview with Padma S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

243 Human Rights Watch interview with Ponnamma S., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 14, 2006.

244 Human Rights Watch interview with Sobani D., Kandy, Sri Lanka, November 10, 2006.

245 Human Rights Watch interview with Sithiraliya M., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 17, 2006.

246 Human Rights Watch interview with Nirmali C., Giribawa, Sri Lanka, November 7, 2006.

247 Human Rights Watch interview with Sepalika S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.

248 Human Rights Watch interview with Chandrika H., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.

249 Human Rights Watch interview with Amirthini L., Maskeliya, Sri Lanka, November 13, 2006.

250 Human Rights Watch interview with Malini S., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 15, 2006.

251 Human Rights Watch interview with Sasindi O., Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

252 Ibid.

253 Human Rights Watch interview with Nirmali C., Giribawa, Sri Lanka, November 7, 2006.

254 Human Rights Watch interview with Sujeejwewani Matharachchi (real name used upon request), Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 3, 2006.

255 Human Rights Watch interview with Sanuthi P., Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

256 Human Rights Watch interview with Al-Haj U.T.M. Anver, ALFEA, Colombo, Sri Lanka, October 31, 2006.

257 Eighty-seven percent reported their employers held their passports; the balance reported the employment agency held their passports, or they did not specify who held their passport. Caritas Lebanon Migrants Center, “Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon: A Summary of the Caritas Survey,” in International Labour Organization, Workshop Report: Awareness-Raising Workshop on the Situation of Women Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon (Beirut: ILO, 2005), http://www.ilo.org/dyn/gender/docs/RES/451/F799002463/Workshop%20Report%20on%20Women%20Domestic%20Migrant%20Workers.pdf (accessed May 14, 2007), annex 4, pp. 32-35.

258 Dr. Ray Jureidini, American University in Cairo, “Profile of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon,” in International Labour Organization, Workshop Report, annex 4, pp. 30-31.

259 Migrant Workers Convention, art. 21.

260 The Dubai Court of Cassation ruled in 2001 that employers are prohibited from confiscating the passport of employees because it violates the worker’s right to travel, and Lebanese civil regulations prohibit employers and employment agencies from withholding migrant workers’ passports. According to Me Joseph Aoun, a lawyer with Caritas Lebanon Migrants Center, “When sponsors pick up their employees at the Lebanese airport, General Security hands the sponsor his or her employee’s passport. Though there is no law against such practice in Lebanon, it is illegal, because generally a passport is the property of the issuing government (Sri Lanka, the Philippines, for example) and so it is not up to a Lebanese to confiscate it.” Ruling by Dubai Court of Cassation, Case # 268 (2001), October 27, 2001; Human Rights Watch interview with Me Joseph Aoun, Caritas Lebanon Migrants Center, Beirut, Lebanon, August 22, 2007.

261 Human Rights Watch interview with Chaturi M., Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

262 Human Rights Watch interview with Krishnan S., Maskeliya, Sri Lanka, November 13, 2006.

263 Human Rights Watch interview with Padma S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

264 Human Rights Watch interview with Nayanadini B., Rambe, Sri Lanka, November 5, 2006.

265 Human Rights Watch interview with Ponnamma S., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 14, 2006.

266 Human Rights Watch interview with Kumari Indunil (real name used upon request), Rambukkana, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

267 Human Rights Watch interview with Kumari S., Vallalgude, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

268 Human Rights Watch interview with Selvakumari W., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 9, 2006.

269 Human Rights Watch interview with Chitra G., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 6, 2006.

270 Human Rights Watch interview with Sobani D., Kandy, Sri Lanka, November 10, 2006.

271 Human Rights Watch interview with Ummu A., Attanagalla, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

272 Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, Annual Statistical Report of Foreign Employment 2005, p. 61.

273 Human Rights Watch interview with Sita S., Giribawa, Sri Lanka, November 7, 2006.

274 Human Rights Watch interview with Koormadhi N., Habaraduwa, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2006.

275 Human Rights Watch interview with Meena P., Talawakelle, Sri Lanka, November 12, 2006.

276 International Organization for Migration, “IOM in Lebanon,” 4th quarter 2006 newsletter, November 18, 2006 , http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/2006/iom-lbn-18nov.pdf (accessed September 6, 2007).

277 “Lebanon: More Funds Needed to Evacuate Stranded Migrants,” IOM press briefing, August 8, 2006, http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/pbnAF/cache/offonce?entryId=9831 (accessed September 6, 2007).

278 Human Rights Watch interview with Sumedha Ekanayake, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 16, 2006.

279 Memorandum from Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Details of Sri Lankan Females Died in the Middle Eastern Countries, 2006,” November 16, 2006.

280 Human Rights Watch interview with Upeksha R., Vallalgude, Sri Lanka, November 6, 2006.

281 Human Rights Watch interview with Priyanthika R., Giribawa, Sri Lanka, November 7, 2006.

282 ILO Convention No. 29 concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour (Forced Labour Convention), adopted June 28, 1930, 39 U.N.T.S. 55, entered into force May 1, 1932, art. 2(1).

283 Human Rights Watch interview with Arivudai H., Habaraduwa, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2006.

284 Human Rights Watch interview with Rohini T., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 14, 2006.

285 Human Rights Watch interview with Soida W., Kegalle, Sri Lanka, November 19, 2006.                                       

286 Human Rights Watch interview with Manaranjani S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

287 Human Rights Watch interview with retired labor agent, name withheld, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 18, 2006; Human Rights Watch interview with Hazzam A. Lathiff, labor agent, All Akeem Enterprises (Pvt) Ltd., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 3, 2006.

288 Human Rights Watch interview with Sobani D., Kandy, Sri Lanka, November 10, 2006.

289 Human Rights Watch interview with Noor F., Attanagalla, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

290 Human Rights Watch interview with Hinni M., Tihari, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

291 Human Rights Watch interview with Sujeejwewani Matharachchi (real name used upon request), Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 3, 2006.

292 Samir Salama, “Retaining Passports is ‘Forcible Labour,’” Gulf News (Dubai, UAE), June 13, 2006, http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/06/13/10046487.html (accessed September 6, 2007).

293 Human Rights Watch interview with Ummu N., Habaraduwa, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2006.

294 Forced Labour Convention, art. 2(1).

295 International Labour Organization, Human Trafficking and Forced Labour Exploitation, p. 20; International Labour Organization, A Global Alliance against Forced Labour: Global Report under the Follow-up  to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (Geneva: ILO, 2005), http://www.ilo.org/dyn/declaris/DECLARATIONWEB.DOWNLOAD_BLOB?Var_DocumentID=5059 (accessed May 2, 2007), pp. 5-6, Box 1.1.

296 International Labour Organization, Human Trafficking and Forced Labour Exploitation, p. 20.

297 Ibid.

298 Ibid.; International Labour Organization, A Global Alliance against Forced Labour, pp. 5-6, Box 1.1.

299 International Labour Organization, Human Trafficking and Forced Labour Exploitation, p. 21.

300 Ibid.

301 International Labour Organization, A Global Alliance against Forced Labour, pp. 5-6, Box 1.1.

302 Ibid.; International Labour Conference, “General Survey of the Reports Relating to the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) and the Abolition of Slavery Convention, 1975 (no. 105): Report of the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations,” Report III, 65th Session (Geneva: ILO, 1979), para. 21.

303 International Labour Organization, A Global Alliance against Forced Labour, p. 6.

304 International Labour Organization, Human Trafficking and Forced Labour Exploitation, p. 23.

305 International Labour Organization, A Global Alliance against Forced Labour, p. 6.

306 International Labour Organization, Fundamental Rights at Work and International Labour Standards, (Geneva: 2003), pp. 36-38.

307 International Labour Organization, Human Trafficking and Forced Labour Exploitation, p. 23.

308 International Labour Organization, A Global Alliance against Forced Labour, p. 6, Box 1.1.

309 Sri Lankan Penal Code, No. 2 , 1883, section 358(A), amended by Penal Code (Amendment) Act, No. 16, 2006, section 7 (making it a criminal offense to subject or cause any person to be subjected to forced or compulsory labor, defined as “all work or service which is exacted from a person under the threat of any penalty and for which such person has not offered himself voluntarily”).

310 Lebanese Penal Code, art. 569 (prohibiting deprivation of personal freedom and prohibiting using a person deprived of personal freedom to “perform a task”); Kuwait Penal Code, art. 173 (imposing penalties on anyone who threatens another person physically or with damage to his reputation or property with a view to forcing the victim to do something) and art. 121; Kuwait Law No. 31 of 1970 on the amendment of the Penal Code, arts. 49 and 57 (prohibiting public officials or employees to force a worker to perform a job for the State or for any public body); UAE Federal Penal Code No. 3, art. 347. See also Constitution of Kuwait, art. 42 (prohibiting forced labor “except in cases specified by law for national emergency and with just remuneration”).

311 Saudi Arabia has no legislation specifically criminalizing forced labor. The labor law calls on employers to “refrain from using the worker without pay,” but it imposes only relatively light penalties on employers who violate these provisions. Because the labor law excludes domestic workers, they are not protected by this provision. Saudi Arabia Labor Law, Royal Decree No. M/51, 23 Sha’ban 1426 (September 27, 2005), arts. 61, 239.

312 Human Rights Watch interview with Chandrika H., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.

313 Human Rights Watch interview with N.M. Sisira Bandara, labor agent, Samasi Manpower Services, Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 3, 2006.

314 Human Rights Watch interview with retired labor agent, name withheld, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 18, 2006.

315 Ibid.

316 Human Rights Watch interview with Soma W., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.

317 Human Rights Watch interview with B. Pradeep Niyadandupola, labor agent, Deshakthee Lanka Enterprises, Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 3, 2006.

318The fees employers pay labor agents range between US$750-1,600 in Saudi Arabia, US$1,000-1,100 in Kuwait and Lebanon, and US$450-1,100 in the UAE. Human Rights Watch interview with retired labor agent, name withheld, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 18, 2006; Human Rights Watch interview with Hazzam A. Lathiff, labor agent, All Akeem Enterprises (Pvt) Ltd., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 3, 2006.

319 Gamburd, The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle, p.69.

320 Human Rights Watch interview with retired labor agent, name withheld, Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 18, 2006.

321 Human Rights Watch interview with Dilinekaa M., Kurunegala district, Sri Lanka, November 5, 2006.

322 Human Rights Watch interview with Manaranjani S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

323 Human Rights Watch interview with Padma S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

324 Human Rights Watch interview with Hanifa S., Tihari, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

325 Human Rights Watch interview with Hasna M., Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 6, 2006.

326 Human Rights Watch interview with Ummu A., Attanagalla, Sri Lanka, November 8, 2006.

327 Ibid.

328 Human Rights Watch interview with Manaranjani S., Katunayake, Sri Lanka, November 1, 2006.

329 Human Rights Watch interview with Nimalka V., Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, November 4, 2006.

330 Human Rights Watch interview with Jayanadani A., Kandy, Sri Lanka, November 10, 2006.