Beyond Kafala: Remedying Human Rights Abuses of Migrant Workers in the Persian Gulf

Ryan Jones is a JD student at the University of Texas School of Law.The six nations that comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—have found themselves severely criticized for the abhorrent conditions that migrant workers frequently face in these countries. One common target of criticism is the kafala system, used to regulate migrant workers in the Persian Gulf and neighboring Arab states. The kafala system requires foreign workers to obtain a sponsor—typically the migrant’s employer—and receive permission before leaving or changing jobs. Many critics argue that the power kafala gives to employers fosters human rights abuses, including nonpayment of wages, inhumane living conditions, human trafficking, as well as physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. As a result, these critics have called for the repeal of kafala as well as a push for additional labor law reform and stricter enforcement. However, as evidenced by Bahrain’s unsuccessful efforts to curtail abuse by dismantling kafala through outreach and labor law reform, merely removing the traditional pillars of kafala is insufficient. This paper examines the method of “root cause analysis” employed by many NGOs and activist groups, drawing on Susan Marks’ critique of such thinking. I argue that attention to legal conditions is insufficient, and that abuses in the GCC are unlikely to significantly subside until gross economic inequality between labor source nations and the GCC is reduced. I also consider an argument made by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl suggesting that the most effective way to combat economic inequality between countries is to encourage migration as it exists in the GCC—by drawing extremely high numbers of a country’s workforce from some of the world’s poorest nations.La