Human Rights in the Middle East
Do you remember the outrage the UN had when it discovered how migrant workers in Qatar were treated during the FIFA 2022 preparation last spring? Well, let me tell you a little secret: all migrant employees working on construction sites are treated this way in the GCC countries. As a matter of fact, this is how Dubai is built.
For many Europeans or Americans who have never lived in the Middle East it is hard to understand the working/immigrant culture in these countries. Like India, the GCC countries have a ‘caste system ‘in which immigrants are categorized and each country has slightly different rules. This ‘caste system’ is a series of unwritten rules that all immigrants learn once they have lived long enough in the region.
Understanding the concerns for the Middle East
The GCC countries consist of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. It is a common practice that Indian, Pakistani and Nepali as well as other Southern Asian workers are at work at their construction sites. This is because the immigrants from this particular Asian region have low-labor cost and they usually do not take their families to live in these countries. Often, they do not enjoy the benefits that European/American/Arab immigrants get. The policy of the GCC construction companies is to have as many low-cost workers as possible to build roads, schools, hospitals, hotels, houses and buildings to provide other immigrants with the luxury they cannot really have in their home countries.
The ‘Caste System’ of the Immigrants
Usually, the locals who choose to work and have the necessarily qualifications open their own businesses and hire immigrants. In almost all companies, locals own at least 50% of the business and a foreigner can hold the other 50%. Afterwards, Europeans, Americans or Arabs who have been educated in the West are hired as managers. Those immigrants have a high status and have a high to middle class life. One-step lower are the people who still do office work, they can be from any other nationality depending on their skills, experience and education. Employees in customer service are usually Filipino or another Far Eastern Asian nationality. For promotions in malls or special events in the countries, companies hire either High School/University students or young women/mothers who want to work part-time for just one time. Another concern for the UN and Western media is gender equality. It is true that in the GCC countries it is very hard to be a single woman living there because they are looked down by the local society but not by the international community. The reason why not many women work in these countries and why most non-Arab women do not want to work is because their husbands earn enough to provide a good living which they could have hardly be able to provide so easily if they were in their home countries. These women prefer to stay home and raise their children while teaching them proper manners due to the many formal gatherings that the families attend.
General Working Policies
Upon arrival, many of the South Asian immigrants’ passports are taken by their employers. Then, they are moved to live in rural areas cut off from cities or in the center of the cities, or what used to be the center before the countries began developing. About ten people live in a tiny apartment, two sharing a bedroom. They work for about 12 hours a day and five work during the day, the other five at nighttime. The poor unsanitary conditions in which they live are no secret to the residents. In fact, annually school children donate food, mobile cards, pots and soaps and other necessities to the migrant workers. This is a way of spreading awareness but no one will openly discuss the life because there is always a chance of either being jailed or deported and forbidden from entering the country, However, responsibility for this treatment relies mostly on the employers not on the government. The vast majority of firms provide housing or cash for the employee to rent a house/apartment in the region he wants, tickets at least once a year to the employee and his family back to their home country for free, the children’s education is usually covered partly by the firm and if a firm sponsors a specific event, its employees can buy tickets on discount.
The Problem
Truthfully, Europe and USA think that the way migrant workers lives are inhumane. With the ‘discovery’ of the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar the West became outspoken. Yet, they do not understand the cultural structure in a society that is simultaneously international and ‘close-minded’ when it comes to human rights. In Qatar, for example, it is uncommon if the employer does not take away the passport of the employees. Even in some cases, in the UAE, they would ask newly-hired to give their passports to the employer. The difference is that the average European/American citizen knows that if the passport is not with him, he becomes dependent on the goodwill of his employee and can be abused without being able to complain to anyone as well as being dependent on when he can leave the company or the country. So, the average Western citizen would not give his passport nor that of his family members to the employer but the South Asian workers consent to being abused by giving them their passport. In the Middle East it is nearly impossible to find an apartment/house to rent if the resident cannot identify himself by his passport. That is one of the causes why there is a migrant caste in the GCC countries. In the end, these working conditions are not new, nor are they different than what most other countries did when they were growing. Even the west has issues with migrant workers being abused.
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