Middle East

Trafficking in the Middle East

The Middle East presents a paradox in the global trafficking landscape: some of the wealthiest nations on earth are among the most prolific exploiters of migrant labor. The region’s rapid economic development, fueled by oil wealth and ambitious construction, tourism, and service-sector growth, has created an insatiable demand for low-cost labor that is met almost entirely by migrant workers from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

The structural foundation of this exploitation is the kafala (sponsorship) system, a legal framework that ties migrant workers’ immigration status to their employer-sponsors, creating a power imbalance that facilitates forced labor, wage theft, and abuse. While several Gulf states have announced reforms to the kafala system, implementation has been slow, enforcement weak, and the fundamental power asymmetry largely intact.

The Kafala (Sponsorship) System

The kafala system is the legal architecture that governs migrant labor across much of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, and Lebanon. Under this system, a migrant worker’s legal residency is tied to their employer (the kafeel or sponsor), who holds control over the worker’s immigration status, ability to change jobs, and in many cases, physical freedom of movement.

How Kafala Enables Exploitation

The kafala system creates conditions ripe for trafficking through several mechanisms:

Passport confiscation: Although illegal in most Gulf states, passport confiscation by employers remains widespread. Workers stripped of their travel documents cannot leave the country, change employers, or seek help at their embassies without their sponsor’s permission.

Debt bondage: Workers frequently arrive in Gulf states already indebted to recruitment agencies in their home countries, having paid fees that may exceed a year’s salary. Upon arrival, they may discover that the wages promised to them are lower than agreed, or that additional deductions reduce their take-home pay to nearly nothing. Unable to leave without repaying debts or forfeiting wages owed, workers are trapped.

Contract substitution: Workers are commonly presented with new contracts upon arrival in the destination country; contracts with lower wages, longer hours, and different job descriptions than those signed in their home country. With debts already incurred and passports surrendered, workers have no practical ability to refuse.

Exit permit requirements: Several Gulf states require workers to obtain their employer’s permission to leave the country. This effectively gives employers veto power over a worker’s ability to escape exploitative conditions.

Qatar World Cup Labor Deaths

Qatar’s selection as host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup brought unprecedented international scrutiny to the treatment of migrant workers in the Gulf. The construction of stadiums, hotels, transportation infrastructure, and an entire new city (Lusail) required hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, predominantly from Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines.

In February 2021, The Guardian published an investigation revealing that more than 6,500 migrant workers from South Asian countries had died in Qatar since the country won the World Cup bid in 2010. While Qatar and FIFA disputed these figures, arguing that many deaths were due to natural causes unrelated to working conditions, the scale of mortality among a relatively young and previously healthy workforce raised serious questions about occupational safety, heat exposure, living conditions, and access to medical care.

Workers reported conditions that constituted forced labor under international definitions: wage theft (months without payment), passport confiscation, denial of rest breaks in extreme heat, overcrowded and unsanitary housing, and inability to change employers or leave the country. Workers who complained or attempted to organize were threatened with deportation; which, given their debts, would mean financial ruin for their families.

The category of “unexplained death” or death by “natural causes” among young South Asian workers became a focal point of investigation. Research published in the journal Cardiology suggested that many of these deaths were likely caused by heat stress leading to cardiac arrest; deaths that were preventable with adequate rest periods, hydration, and working-hour restrictions during peak heat.

Domestic Worker Abuse

Domestic workers in the Middle East, predominantly women from the Philippines, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, represent one of the most vulnerable populations to trafficking globally. Numbering in the millions across the Gulf states, domestic workers are frequently excluded from labor law protections, isolated in private households, and subjected to conditions that meet international definitions of forced labor.

The abuse of domestic workers in the Middle East is systemic rather than anecdotal. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the ILO have documented patterns that recur across countries and decades: confinement to the employer’s home, denial of days off, non-payment or underpayment of wages, verbal and physical abuse, sexual assault, and restrictions on communication with family members or embassies.

In extreme cases, domestic workers have been driven to suicide or attempted escape by jumping from high-rise buildings; a phenomenon so common in some Gulf countries that it has its own grim designation. In Kuwait, Human Rights Watch documented that an average of two domestic workers per week attempted suicide or escape by jumping from employer residences during one study period.

The rise of online “maid trading” apps in Gulf countries, where domestic workers are advertised for sale or transfer between employers, complete with photographs and nationality specifications, drew international condemnation in 2019. Apple and Google removed several such apps from their stores following media investigations by the BBC and other outlets.

Recruitment & Deception

The exploitation of domestic workers begins in their home countries, where recruitment agencies charge fees that may exceed a year’s salary. Workers are shown contracts promising specific wages, hours, and conditions; contracts that are frequently replaced upon arrival in the destination country. Some workers discover that the job they were recruited for does not exist, and are instead placed with different employers under different terms. The recruitment industry in sending countries such as the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Indonesia is poorly regulated, with agencies operating as intermediaries in a system designed to maximize the debt burden on workers before they even begin working.

The “Freelancer” Problem

Domestic workers who flee abusive employers in Gulf states often become “freelancers”; undocumented workers who take on informal employment to survive. Without legal residency status, these workers are vulnerable to arrest, detention, and deportation, as well as further exploitation by employers who know they cannot seek legal recourse. Periodic government “amnesty” programs offer undocumented workers the opportunity to regularize their status or leave the country without penalty, but these programs are temporary and do not address the structural conditions that produce undocumented domestic workers in the first place.

Conflict Zone Trafficking: Syria, Yemen & Iraq

The Middle East’s multiple armed conflicts have generated massive displacement and created conditions in which trafficking flourishes. Syria’s civil war, Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe, and Iraq’s post-ISIS reconstruction have each produced distinct trafficking patterns.

Syria

The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and has displaced more than 13 million people, has created one of the largest trafficking crises of the 21st century. Syrian refugees ; particularly those in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan ; are vulnerable to labor trafficking, sexual exploitation, and forced marriage. Syrian children are trafficked for forced begging, street vending, and agricultural labor in host countries. The early and forced marriage of Syrian girls ; sometimes to much older men paying a “bride price” to desperate families ; has been extensively documented.

Yemen

Yemen’s civil war has produced what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The Houthi rebel group has been documented recruiting and using child soldiers, some as young as ten, with the UN verifying hundreds of cases. Trafficking for forced labor and sexual exploitation occurs in the context of near-total state collapse, with millions facing famine and lacking access to basic services.

Iraq & ISIS

The Islamic State’s campaign of genocide against the Yazidi people of northern Iraq constituted one of the most systematic trafficking operations in modern history. Beginning in August 2014, ISIS captured thousands of Yazidi women and girls, enslaving them as sabaya (sex slaves) and distributing them among fighters as property. ISIS published price lists for Yazidi captives, maintained slave markets, and developed a theological justification for the enslavement. Years after the territorial defeat of ISIS, thousands of Yazidi women and children remain missing.

Lebanon

Lebanon’s treatment of migrant domestic workers has drawn sustained international criticism. An estimated 250,000 migrant domestic workers, predominantly from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, work in Lebanese households under the kafala system, excluded from the country’s labor law protections.

The abuse of domestic workers in Lebanon has been documented extensively. Workers report being confined to employers’ homes, denied rest days, subjected to physical and sexual violence, and having their wages withheld for months or years. When workers flee abusive employers, they become undocumented and face arrest and deportation. Lebanese law offers virtually no recourse for abused domestic workers.

The rate of domestic worker deaths in Lebanon has drawn particular alarm. An average of two migrant domestic workers died per week in Lebanon during the period studied by Human Rights Watch; many from suicide or falls from high-rise buildings that investigators suspect were attempts to escape. Ethiopia temporarily banned its citizens from traveling to Lebanon for domestic work in response to reports of abuse.

Lebanon’s economic collapse, which accelerated in 2019, worsened conditions for domestic workers. Employers unable to pay wages abandoned workers, leaving thousands stranded without income, documentation, or means to return home. The Beirut port explosion of August 2020 further devastated a country already in crisis, displacing additional domestic workers and destroying the consular infrastructure they depended upon.

Israel & Palestine

Israel experiences labor trafficking primarily among migrant workers in agriculture, construction, and caregiving. The country’s “binding arrangement”, which tied migrant workers to a single employer, was reformed following a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, but exploitative practices persist. Thai agricultural workers, Filipino caregivers, and Chinese and Romanian construction workers have all been identified as trafficking victims in Israel.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, the complex political and security situation creates additional vulnerabilities. Palestinian workers crossing into Israel for employment face exploitation facilitated by the permit system, while workers in the West Bank and Gaza face trafficking risks compounded by restrictions on movement and economic deprivation.

Iran

Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for trafficking. Afghan migrants and refugees, who number approximately three million in Iran, are particularly vulnerable to labor exploitation in construction, agriculture, and domestic work. Afghan children in Iran are documented working in brick kilns, carpet weaving, and street begging under conditions that constitute forced labor.

Iran is also a transit point for trafficking routes from South Asia and East Africa to Turkey and Europe. Women from Iran and neighboring countries are trafficked for sexual exploitation within the country and to Gulf states, Turkey, and Pakistan. The Iranian government’s approach to trafficking is complicated by its interpretation of Islamic law, which may classify trafficking victims as criminals, particularly women in prostitution, rather than as victims entitled to protection. The U.S. TIP Report has consistently placed Iran on Tier 3 (the lowest ranking), citing the government’s failure to meet minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

Reforms & Their Limits

Several Middle Eastern countries have implemented reforms in response to international pressure, particularly around high-profile events like the Qatar World Cup. These reforms include minimum wage laws, abolition of exit permit requirements, digital wage protection systems, and limited labor mobility provisions. However, the gap between legal reform and practical implementation remains vast.

Critics note that reforms often fail to reach the workers who need them most. Domestic workers remain excluded from labor law protections in most Gulf states. Workers in smaller enterprises, on farms, or in informal employment fall outside the scope of reforms. Most critically, the fundamental power imbalance between employer and worker, reinforced by debt bondage, passport confiscation, and immigration dependency, persists regardless of legal changes.

The ILO has acknowledged progress in some countries, particularly Qatar, while noting that “reform implementation requires sustained effort over many years” and that “significant gaps remain between law and practice.”

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