The conditions described in last week’s Guardian exclusive entitled, “Revealed: Qatar’s World Cup ‘slaves’” are emblematic of the situation of migrant workers throughout the Gulf region, not just in Qatar, and not just on high-profile FIFA projects. Nonetheless, perhaps it is the merit of this event to at least bring migrant issues in focus for a wider audience of readers. This is particularly important for Europe, from where much of FIFA’s activities are financed; it is also a region to which countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are increasingly looking for longer-term, consumption-based foreign investment.

The vast majority of workers in Qatar (over 90 per cent) today are non-nationals, which in most cases means migrant workers from South Asian countries (apart from Nepalis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are also well-represented). According to recent statistics, throughout the GCC region as a whole, as the largest recipients of temporary migrants in the world, the ratio of non-nationals as a percentage of the total population currently stands at about 43 per cent—although in countries such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), those figures cross 80 per cent.

This influx has been going on since the 1970s, when the oil boom fuelled a massive regional construction industry, which, despite recent slowdowns in the global economy, is still thriving and attracting large numbers of workers hoping to improve their own and their families lives, often at immense personal costs.

Traditionally, the largest proportion of Nepalis migrates to India, often outside the national and international limelight. Many Nepali migrants come from some of the poorest districts in the country and are forced to accept low-paid seasonal labour jobs in the agricultural sector in order to make ends meet. However, since the 1980s, when emigration to other destinations further afield first emerged, and particularly since the early 2000s, an ever-growing flow of labour migrants, especially in lower-skilled sectors, have sought employment in the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates [UAE], Kuwait and Bahrain), and Southeast Asia (in particular, Malaysia), as well as some East Asian countries (Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and China).

Thus, while opportunities for migration have increased, so have the challenges for protecting migrants’ rights. Continuing political turmoil in the country has not made things easier. Without a constitution, the absence of a reliable rights framework for Nepal’s citizens—including its migrant population—has meant continued insecurity in many policy areas, including migration. This also means that legislative interventions—for instance, tougher laws safeguarding migrants’ rights—have been particularly challenging.

The Nepali government, while driven by a clear imperative to utilise labour export as both a valve for relieving pressure from a national labour market facing extremely high unemployment and a means of attracting remittances—which equals almost 30 per cent of the country’s GDP—has had an open ear to these concerns. However, it is also in an unenviable position vis-à-vis the labour-receiving countries, particularly in the Gulf, who largely dictate the terms and conditions under which migrants come to work there.

Over six years of research, supported by DanChurchAid, in the context of a regional Safe Migration Progamme, has revealed that (a) most South Asian migrants are from poor rural backgrounds and extremely vulnerable to exploitation; (b) their rights are not being properly protected by sending or receiving states; (c) the Kafala system puts them at increased risk of exploitation, due to its stringent control over entry, stay, and exit of workers by employers.

The GCC countries are characterised by extremely restrictive legal environments and the virtual absence of safeguards for human and labour rights, particularly for non-nationals, which makes accessing avenues for legal recourse extremely challenging. Additionally, most of these countries either ban trade unions altogether or prevent migrant workers from organising and/or joining any workers associations or unions. Their rights to political participation, including freedom of speech, assembly and of association, therefore remain unrealised in most cases.

Thus, much of the work of civil society organisations focus on trying to establish links between exploited and stranded migrant workers and their home countries, so those respective governments can be urged to take action through diplomatic channels.

This advocacy work is especially challenging now, as ‘migration management’ has become the order of the day, and many destination countries are fortifying their borders against unwanted immigrants while at the same time trying to cherry-pick migrants with particular skills to fill shortages in national labour markets. Alongside this, the import of lower-skilled labour continues unabated (and often unregulated). Many sending countries—including Nepal and its neighbours—have been only too eager to service such demands for strictly temporary migrant workers. The importance of safeguarding migrants’ rights has been largely sidelined.

For a small country like Nepal, with its dependence on remittances writ large and growing every year, it is understandably difficult to make any headway in pushing for better labour conditions for migrants on its own. Therefore, it will be important to build and nourish alliances by (a) signing and ratifying international instruments designed to protect migrants’ rights—most notably, the 1990 UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, as well as the relevant International Labour Organisation Conventions protecting migrant workers in general, and domestic workers in particular; and (b) to foster regional cooperation on migrants’ rights together with other sending states, so that together they may put an end to the ability to receive states to pit one labour supplier against the other in a perpetual race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions.

This is a Himalayan task, which is easier stated than accomplished but there have been examples of sending countries taking a stronger stance on these issues, for example, Bangladesh and Cambodia. Nepal would do well to not only follow their example but also to explore possibilities of a regional for a such as the Abu Dhabi Dialogue and the Colombo Process to foster stronger collaboration and push for better rights protection. As pointed out in The Kathmandu Post’s editorial (‘All together now,’ September 29), SAARC certainly has a lot of unexplored potential in coordinating responses to problems—the rights of the region’s many migrant workers would certainly be worth getting its act together.

Published on: 2 October 2013 | The Kathmandu Post