ABSTRACT ACCORDING TO REPORT: 

“At least 146,000 female migrant domestic workers—perhaps many more—are employed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Female domestic workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Ethiopia, and elsewhere face severe abuse and exploitation by employers and labor recruitment agencies.

“I Already Bought You”: Abuse and Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates documents how the UAE’s visa sponsorship system (known as kafala) ties migrant workers to employers and how the exclusion of domestic workers from labor law protections leaves migrant domestic workers at risk of abuse. The report exposes barriers preventing abused domestic workers from obtaining remedy, including lack of shelters, penalties for “absconding” workers, and justice system failings.

Based on interviews with 99 female domestic workers, recruitment agents, employers, and others in the UAE, the report documents abuses that domestic workers face—passport confiscation, non-payment of wages, lack of rest periods and time off, confinement to households, excessive work and working hours, food deprivation, and psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. In some cases the abuses amounted to forced labor or trafficking.

The UAE has an increasingly influential role in the international labor arena. In 2014, it joined the governing body of the International Labour Organization. At home, however, it maintains the exploitative kafala system, has failed to adopt a bill pending since 2012 on domestic workers’ rights, and has yet to ratify key international treaties on migrants’ and domestic workers’ rights.

Human Rights Watch calls for the reform of the kafala system and the introduction of labor law protections and other measures to fully protect domestic workers’ rights.”