Barbara Degorge, "Modern Day Slavery in the
United Arab Emirates,"
The European Legacy, vol. 11, October 2006, pp. 657-665. Copyright 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis, Ltd., http//:www.tandf.co.uk/journals and the author.
Barbara Degorge is a professor at the
American University in
Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
It is a simple and accepted truth that slavery exists in the twenty-first century. More and more, people are becoming aware that this practice persists, as much or more so than it did 100 years ago. Contemporary slavery is not a phenomenon of modernity, rather it is a timeless institution that has continued to evolve. Today more than 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, ranging from the African continent, Europe, North and South America to the
Middle East. Moreover, the type of slavery and the conditions under which it exists have changed due to increased globalization and modernization.
In the last few years the case of Sudan has brought slavery to public attention with the news about the civil war between the North and South revealing a bustling market in
human trafficking. However, other regions where slavery is practiced receive little or no attention. One of these regions is the Arabian Gulf which has altogether escaped world attention. This lack of attention is mainly explained by the rapid modernization and development of the Gulf States, where modern skyscrapers and advanced technology hide grimmer realities. This paper examines the different forms of slavery practiced daily in one of the Gulf States the United Arab Emirates [UAE]….
In the Middle East and especially in the Gulf States there is today an active slave trade. Three types of slavery are practiced: exploitation of children,
chattel slavery, and "migrant worker" slavery, people who arrive of their own free will with the intention of bettering their lot. These migrants, however, do not always know what they are getting into or how to deal with the situations they fall prey to. This tripartite classification of slavery is close to the UN definition of serfdom; however, the latter term is misleading as the slave is not tied to the land; it applies insofar as both cases entail the slave’s total lack of mobility.
Exploitation of children is probably the most shocking form of slavery the world has witnessed in recent times. It is practiced not only in the United Arab Emirates but in
India and many Asian countries. The UAE exploits children mainly as camel jockeys. Children as young as three-year-olds are used to ride camels because of their small size and weight. They are tied to the camel’s back so that they won’t fall off, which enables the camel to race without the encumbrance of an adult person. As in most countries, slavery in the UAE was outlawed (in 2003): it is
illegal for a child under 15 years or weighing less than 45 kilos [99 lbs] to be a camel jockey. However, the oil rich countries of the Gulf region find it more profitable to continue this centuries-old practice of buying children from the Indian subcontinentIndia, Bangladesh, Pakistanas well as from Sudan.
Many are kidnapped; many are sold into slavery because their families are too poor to support them. It is estimated that as many as 5,000 children, from two years and upwards, have been kidnapped or bought to be used as camel jockeys. Being a camel jockey is a seven-day-a-week job, all year roundeven in times of extreme heat, which most people in the Gulf States would strive to avoid. The children are maltreated: they are woken up in the middle of the night to clean camel dung with their bare hands; they are beaten if they do not perform well enough and many are injured, killed or maimed during the camel races; they receive no schooling; have no idea about their family origins and are regularly beaten to keep them in line. Some are sexually molested by the trainers, as Peter Conradi reports. When children grow too old or physically big to be camel jockeys, they are lucky if they find employment in one of the camel stables or else are simply left to fend for themselves. This is an extremely dangerous situation for youngsters as throughout the Middle East it is
illegal not to hold legal residency status, thus making them subject to fines or incarceration.
In 2004, a Pakistani
human rights attorney, Ansar Burney, finally succeeded in bringing the problem of child slavery to public attention in the UAE. After spending two weeks filming this form of slavery in action, Burney convinced Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi to see the film. The film exposed the bare facts of the trade and all who viewed it were horrified. In March 2005, the Emirati Sheikhs pledged that they were going to put a stop to the practice, which had become a cause of embarrassment for the wealthy Gulf States. They set up "refugee" homes for the boys while an attempt was made to find their families. However, many were too young when they became slaves even to remember who they were or where they came from, which is why so many of them are still in the UAE. Although the practice was outlawed again in 2005, this does not mean that it no longer exists. Human rights groups such as Anti-Slavery International are concerned that it will not really be banned given that a similar law was initiated in 2002. This form of human trafficking, the only way to classify this practice, thus continues throughout the Gulf States.
Another form of human trafficking that is prevalent in the Gulf States, specifically in the UAE,
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, is the forcing of women and children into the sex trade. Saul Hudson points out that the United States has criticized these four
Arab countries as the worst offenders in the human sex trade, but the offenders have done virtually nothing to stop the practice of women being used as sex slaves.
Many of the women who enter into this type of slavery do so without knowing what they are getting into. They come to the Gulf States with the idea of starting a new life and finding a job in order to help their families in their home country. They leave their homes, come to the UAE, Kuwait, or another Gulf country, arriving in the home of an Arab family to work as maids or child carers. One such woman, Kamala Rai, arrived in Saudi Arabia in the hope of opening a shop. Instead, her sponsor locked her up, beat her and raped her. The journals she wrote, later found in her suitcase when she finally returned to her native Nepal, illustrate the horrors she experienced during her three-and-a-half-month stay in the Gulf. Others are kept in prostitution homes where they are forced to serve any customer at any time of the day or night.
In 2005 the US State Department cited the case of a young Uzbekistani orphan girl who was sold into slavery in the UAE. She was kept as a prostitute until deemed "unusable." At this point, as Hudson reports, the UAE
immigration service stepped in and declared her an
illegal immigrant, for which offence she was sentenced to two years in prison.
As one walks down the streets of Dubai, the most liberal of the Emirates, or goes into one of its many hotels, one sees many prostitutes from Eastern Europe. But Dubai is not the only Emirate where prostitution is visible; it is seen in all the Emirates as well as the neighboring Gulf States. Many of these women, from Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe, whether sold as prostitutes or arriving with the expectation of finding respectable employment, find themselves trapped. They are unable to free themselves because, overwhelmed by shame they fear to tell anyone back home what has befallen them.
The two forms of slavery discussed above are practiced not only in the Gulf but worldwide. The sex trade thrives in New York and Paris. The camel jockey, although unique to the Gulf, is only one form of child slave labor, which exists in other forms throughout the world.
The third type of slavery in the Gulf region is that of migrant workers. A migrant worker is someone who has come from another place to perform a job on a temporary basis. About 75% of the population of the UAE can be classified as migrant workers, though most would prefer to be defined as "expatriates." They are certainly expatriates but they are all also migrant workers. They may be divided into two groups: those who have well paid jobs and those who work for next to nothing. But can this be defined as slavery, for, after all, it is directly tied to earning wages? It also raises the question asked earlier: what is it that makes a person free? There is no set definition of wage slavery, only differing views….
In the Gulf States there is an inordinate number of foreign workers dispersed throughout the region. In the UAE, 90% of the workforce is not Emirati. Out of a population of approximately 2.8 million, it is estimated that 1.5 million people come from the Indian subcontinent with the balance of foreigners from western countries and southeast Asia. This is an astronomical figure, in light of the fact that the UAE government has adopted a policy of Emiratization. Not included in it are the
illegal immigrants: in 2003 the UAE government issued an amnesty and over 200,000
illegal workers came forward. Whether impoverished or not, all of these people were subject to some form of wage slavery, though they may not be aware of it.
The obvious form of wage slavery includes those holding menial jobs such as factory workers, construction workers, and housecleaners. These are people who come to the UAE and work for what in their home countries would be considered a lot of money. However, their wages, if compared to other wages earned within the UAE, are pitifully low. Some earn only the equivalent of $200 per month which is insufficient to meet the cost of living in the UAE, while sending a portion back to their families.
Slavery today is voluntary: willingly but perhaps unknowingly people give up their freedoms.
The factory and construction workers typically live in labor camps which are hurriedly constructed and poor in quality. Several of them are crowded into one room, with a small air-conditioning unit in the ceiling. They are transported daily to and from work in buses that are not air-conditioned, even in summer. Often they are not paid on time, which has led to a few cases of rioting and setting fire to the camps.
It is not unusual to see women dressed in
abayas with
shaylas walking a few steps behind an Arab family, pushing a baby carriage or holding an Arab child in their arms. These women, usually Philipino, Indonesian, or Malaysian, work as housekeepers in Arab or expatriate families, and hold next to no rights at all. Locked in the homes where they work, they rarely receive any wages. These women, some of whom are as young as six-year-old girls, are often beaten by their mistresses and sexually abused by their masters….
It can be argued that these cases are not classic examples of slavery. However, the processes of globalization and modernization require us to re-define slavery: The very nuances and modality of enslaving people have undergone change. Slaves today are no longer captured in war or sold. Although the former can still be found, slavery now refers to the situation of people who out of economic necessity enter into work relationships that either limit their freedom of choice or their mobility. Except for the child who becomes a camel jockey, slavery today is voluntary: willingly but perhaps unknowingly people give up their freedoms.
Because globalization has contributed to the continuation of slavery, albeit in new forms, slavery will not be eradicated without globalization.
Those who choose to put themselves in the position of being human traffic for prostitution do so for the most part with the knowledge of what they are doing. They may not realize the conditions they are entering but the prospect of a better life lures them. Unfortunately, this fantasy soon disappears. Similarly, the majority of those who enter into a slave wage contract have no idea of the consequences. The vast majority, whether underprivileged or enjoying apparent privileges, willingly accept the situation in which their freedom is controlled or limited. It is this psychological aspect of the wage slave that turns them into slaves. It is inconceivable that intelligent humans fall prey to the subtle machinations of employers who infuse fears into their minds of losing their livelihood or the chance to return home. These tactics of fear contribute to the ongoing practice of wage slavery.
The question is whether modern day slavery should be condoned or stopped. It is clearly possible to monitor and eradicate the practice of buying children as camel jockeys. In fact, many of the wealthy sheikhs who own the race camels have stopped using children in public. This does not mean that the practice has completely stopped; it may have diminished, but in many instances it has simply been swept under the rug.
But the other two forms of slavery in the UAE will prove more difficult to abolish. The young women who enter into prostitution are not aware of the price they are going to pay or the freedoms they are going to give up. Can this form of slavery be curtailed? Probably it can, but only with improved education and economic conditions for those who involve themselves in such employment. The growing interest of the media and international human rights organizations has brought slavery into the limelight. As more people become aware of what slavery looks like, the practice may perhaps dwindle and fade away as a means to making fast money.
It is the practice of wage slavery that will be most difficult to eradicate, if at all. This voluntary form of slavery is partly created by the global economic conditions. Although the total ramifications of the situation are not always obvious, this condition will prevail so long as people believe they are better off entering into this arrangement for a determined period of time. They endure the fears instilled into them and the mental and at times physical anguish they are subjected to because these are perceived as a means to an end. But among the many who endure there are those who cannot pull themselves out of their situation as they become so indoctrinated with fear of the loss of freedom and mobility. They do not see any other way; they do not perceive themselves as slaves.
In conclusion, slavery in the UAE and other Gulf States can be stopped, but this demands the recognition that slavery persists and the moral courage to change the laws of the land. Ironically, because globalization has contributed to the continuation of slavery, albeit in new forms, slavery will not be eradicated without globalization, for it is only the economically wealthy countries that can do most to combat it: without international pressure it is doubtful that these practices will ever be abolished.
FURTHER READINGS
Books
- Beate Andrees and Patrick Belser, eds. Forced Labor: Coercion and Exploitation in the Private Economy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009.
- Claudia Aradau Rethinking Trafficking in Women: Politics Out of Security. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
- Alexis A. Aronowitz Human Trafficking, Human Misery: The Global Trade in Human Beings. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009.
- Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009.
- Kevin Bales and Zoe Trodd, eds. To Plead Our Own Cause: Personal Stories by Today’s Slaves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.
- David Batstone Not for Sale: The Return of The Global Slave Tradeand How We Can Fight It. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007.
- Karen Beeks and Delila Amir, eds. Trafficking and the Global Sex Industry. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006.
- Sally Cameron and Edward Newman, eds. Trafficking in Humans: Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions. New York: United Nations University Press, 2008.
- Steve Chalke Stop the Traffik: People Shouldn’t Be Bought and Sold. Oxford: Lion, 2009.
- Susan Dewey Hollow Bodies: Institutional Responses to Sex Trafficking in Armenia, Bosnia, and India. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2008.
- Dessi Dimitrova, ed. Marshaling Every Resource: State and Local Responses to Human Trafficking. Princeton, NJ: Policy Research Institute for the Region, 2007.
- Theresa L. Flores The Sacred Bath: An American Teen’s Story of Modern Day Slavery. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007.
- Anna Jonsson, ed. Human Trafficking and Human Security. New York: Routledge, 2009.
- Maggy Lee, ed. Human Trafficking. Portland, OR: Willan, 2007.
- Kimberly A. McCabe The Trafficking of Persons: National and International Responses. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
- Sarah Elizabeth Mendelson Barracks and Brothels: Peacekeepers and Human Trafficking in the Balkans. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2005.
- Tom Obokata Trafficking of Human Beings from a Human Rights Perspective: Towards a Holistic Approach. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2006.
- Andrea Parrot and Nina Cummings Sexual Enslavement of Girls and Women Worldwide. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008.
- Ernesto U. Savona and Sonia Stef, eds. Measuring Human Trafficking: Complexities and Pitfalls. New York: Springer, 2007.
- Silvia Scarpa Trafficking in Human Beings: Modern Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Clare Ribando Seelke and Alison Siskin Trafficking in People. New York: Novinka Books, 2008.
- Kara Siddharth Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
- E. Benjamin Skinner A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. New York: Free Press, 2008.
- Kimberley L. Thachuk, ed. Transnational Threats: Smuggling and Trafficking in Arms, Drugs, and Human Life. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007.
- Louisa Waugh Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006.
- Jeremy M. Wilson Human Trafficking in Ohio: Markets, Responses, and Considerations. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2007.
- Sheldon X. Zhang Smuggling and Trafficking in Human Beings: All Roads Lead to America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.
Periodicals
- Joey Ager "Freedom Songs," Sojourners Magazine, March 2009.
- America "Human Trafficking Victims Need More Help," December 3, 2007.
- Bridget Anderson and Rutvica Andrijasevic "Sex, Slaves and Citizens: The Politics of Anti-Trafficking," Soundings, Winter 2008.
- S.M. Berg "Pornography, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking: How Do You Tell the Difference?" Off Our Backs, July 2007.
- Kevin Clarke "Hidden in Plain Sight," U.S. Catholic, January 2009.
- Liz Craft "Making a Difference," Times Educational Supplement, October 24, 2008.
- Michael Cory Davis "Human Trafficking," Hispanic, September 2007.
- Shannon Devine "Poverty Fuels Trafficking to Japan," Herizons, Winter 2007.
- Julie L. Drolet "Trafficking and the Global Sex Industry," International Social Work, March 2009.
- Economist "Drawing Lines in a Dark Place," August 16, 2008.
- Melissa Farley "The New Abolitionists," Ms., Spring 2008.
- William Finnegan "The Countertraffickers," New Yorker, March 5, 2008.
- Barbara Glickstein "The Tragedy of Human Trafficking," American Journal of Nursing, November 2008.
- Viv Groskop "Not for Sale," New Statesman, June 2, 2008.
- Jeff Israely "Where the Sun Shines Brightly," Time, July 14, 2008.
- Andrew Jacobs "Rural China’s Hunger for Sons Fuels Traffic in Abducted Boys," New York Times, April 5, 2009.
- Dawn Herzog Jewell "Child Sex Tours," Christianity Today, January 2007.
- Nicholas D. Kristof "If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?" New York Times, January 4, 2009.
- Mark P. Lagon "Trafficking and Human Dignity," Policy Review, December 2008-January 2009.
- T.K. Logan, Robert Walker, and Gretchen Hunt "Understanding Human Trafficking in the United States," Trauma, Violence and Abuse, January 2009.
- Susan Mohammad "Prostitutes Are Okay, but Not Pimps," Maclean’s, December 8, 2008.
- Brendan O’Neill "The Myth of Trafficking," New Statesman, March 31, 2008.
- Caroline Preston "From the Shadows," Chronicle of Philanthropy, December 11, 2008.
- E. Benjamin Skinner "People for Sale," Utne Reader, July-August 2008.
- Emma Thompson "Slavery in Our Times," Newsweek, March 17, 2008.
- Jonathan Tran "Sold into Slavery," Christian Century, November 27, 2007.
- Christine Van Dusen "Peonage in New Orleans," Progressive, August 2008.
- Celia Williamson and Michael Prior "Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: A Network of Underground Players in the Midwest," Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009.
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Global Efforts Can Reduce Human Trafficking in the Persian Gulf .
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