Event: Living as Commodities: Human trafficking & migrant exploitation in the Arab Gulf

Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) will be hosting parliamentary panel on forced labor and sex trafficking, which affects millions of migrant workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The GCC-wide kafala system is a mechanism through which governments effectively enable forced trafficking and labor. In addition, individual states maintain a gender-biased legal[…]

India continues to act unilaterally in fight against human trafficking in the GCC

Once again, the Government of India has unilaterally taken steps to mitigate migrant labor abuses in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Indian officials have consistently enacted one-sided measures in order to ensure their citizens’ safety abroad, and GCC governments have failed to fulfill their parts. In March and April 2016, India initiated two Memoranda of[…]

Stranded in Saudi: Citizens and Migrants Unite in Rare Protest

In September, hundreds of Saudi and foreign workers employed at a private hospital in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province went on strike in protest over months of unpaid wages. The strike, coordinated and orchestrated by both Saudi citizen-workers and migrants, marks a turning point in migrant and labor relations in the Gulf, and indicates the escalation[…]

UAE Fails to Protect Child Sex Trafficking Victims

Late last month, the Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) acquitted, along with four others, a mother whose daughters accused her of selling them into prostitution in Dubai. The mother, along with her accomplices, lured the girls to the UAE from Pakistan and forced them to work in a massage parlor. The authorities only[…]

UAE Cybersecurity Law Threatens Freedom of Expression

On 21 July 2016, President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) issued new legislation further intensifying existing cybercrime laws enacted under Federal Law No. 5 of 2012. The amendment, Federal Law No. 12 of 2016, punishes Internet users who use counterfeited IP addresses with the intent to commit a crime[…]