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IX. Recommendations

To The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

To His Royal Highness Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, First Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard:

  • Appoint an independent and impartial royal commission to conduct a national inquiry into the situation of migrant workers in the kingdom. 
    • The commission’s mandate should include identifying underlying systemic problems that facilitate abuses and proposing remedies. The commission should focus on criminal justice system flaws that systematically deny basic due process and other rights, and it should closely investigate the role of networks of individuals in the private sector who benefit financially from the exploitation of migrant workers.
    • The commission’s members should include men and women, particularly women, who are professionally trained in the fields of law, medicine, psychology, social work, and journalism.  The commission should be provided with sufficient resources so that it can employ professional staff to collect and analyze information from victims of abuse, including migrant workers in deportation jails and those who are detained or imprisoned in the criminal justice system.  
    • The commission should hold public hearings as part of its inquiry.  Migrant workers, and their families and advocates, should be invited to give testimony, as should regional and international nongovernmental organizations concerned with the rights of migrant workers. 
    • The commission should be required to complete its work within a defined period of time, and make its findings and recommendations publicly available. 
  • Promulgate by royal decree an enforceable “bill of rights” for migrant workers and publicize it widely in the kingdom, using print and broadcast media and other means of public outreach.  The decree should be issued simultaneously in Arabic and all the languages of the countries of origin of the migrant worker population. It should delineate, in a comprehensive and detailed manner, all the rights that are granted to migrant workers under the kingdom’s laws and regulations. The bill of rights should serve as a practical educational tool for workers and employers alike, and clarify legal and other ambiguities that lead to abusive treatment.
  • Comply with the requirements of the International Labor Organization’s Convention (No. 29) concerning Forced Labor, and make the use of forced or compulsory labor a specifically defined criminal offense under domestic law.
  • Impose substantial penalties on employers who withhold the passports and residency permits of migrant workers, and those who charge illegal fees for official immigration documents, and widely publicize the institution of these sanctions.
  • Extend the protections of the kingdom’s labor law to all migrant workers, irrespective of job category and gender.
  • Take immediate steps to end the forced confinement of women migrant workers at places of employment and residence, and promulgate and widely publicize regulations to this effect. The regulations should impose substantial penalties on employers who continue the practice, and provide fair and equal compensation to the victims, commensurate with the length and severity of their confinement.
  • Ensure that the upcoming government report concerning its compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women includes comprehensive information about the situation of women migrant workers in the kingdom.
  • Ratify the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and urge the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council to do the same.

To the Minister of Labor

  • Define, in consultation with the ministry of justice, the specific conditions that constitute illegal forced or compulsory labor, and take all appropriate measures to ensure that employers and workers in the kingdom are aware of these prohibitions.
  • Designate a task force to draft a “bill of rights” for migrant workers in the kingdom for submission to the Consultative Council and senior government officials. The task force should work in coordination with its counterparts in the ministry of interior and the ministry of justice. 
  • Afford migrant workers in deportation jails the opportunity to utilize existing legal mechanisms to file grievance complaints against their employers before departure from the kingdom, and make resources available to them so that they have access to grievance mechanisms.
  • Conduct an independent review of the kingdom’s labor grievance mechanisms and, in cooperation with other relevant ministries, make practical recommendations to address the problem of the lack of enforcement of decisions of labor dispute commissions.

To the Minister of Interior

  • Bring interior ministry arrest and detention practices into conformity with the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
  • Inform migrant workers who are arrested as criminal suspects of their rights under the kingdom’s laws, including the rights guaranteed in the new criminal procedure code. This information should be provided orally and in writing, in languages that migrants can understand.
  • End as an urgent matter the arrest and imprisonment of migrant women who become pregnant voluntarily or because they were victims of sexual violence.
  • Make public detailed information about migrant workers who have been sentenced to death in the kingdom and are awaiting execution.

To the Minister of Justice

  • Formulate a legal strategy to meet the requirements of ILO Convention (No. 29) concerning Forced Labor by making the use of forced or compulsory labor a criminal offense under Saudi law, and train prosecutors and judges to thoroughly investigate complaints about this abuse.
  • Provide legal guidance to the Interior Ministry to ensure that its arrest and detention practices with respect to foreign nationals are in strict conformity with the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
  • Take immediate steps to ensure judicial supervision of the investigation of migrant workers who are criminal suspects for the purpose of ending abusive interrogations, torture, and coerced confessions.
  • Offerfree legal assistance during investigation and trial to all migrant workers accused of criminal offenses.
  • Ensure that no one detained on suspicion of committing a criminal offense will be hampered during investigation and trial because of a lack of fluency in Arabic.  Provide professional interpreters for all suspects in such circumstances if their embassies and consular officials have not provided such services.  
  • Suspend the implementation of the death sentences of migrant workers and others in the kingdom until it can be determined independently that torture was not used and confessions were not coerced.
  • Instruct all judges in the kingdom to consider carefully cases of migrant workers charged with criminal offenses that originated with sponsors or employers and may be related to labor disputes. Judges should refer these cases to labor grievance bodies for a decision before continuing with the legal proceedings.

To the Consultative Council of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

  • Urge the government to appoint a royal commission of inquiry to examine the widespread abuses against migrant workers, and the public and private systems that enable such abuses to occur. 
  • Hold open hearings to identify major problems of migrant workers that can be addressed through specific legislative initiatives and reforms.  Testimony should be requested from senior government officials – including the ministers of labor, interior, and justice – as well as migrant workers themselves and nongovernmental migrant rights organizations inside and outside the kingdom.
  • Recommend that the Ministry of Labor draft, and the government promulgate, a “bill of rights” for migrant workers that sets forth in clear and unambiguous terms practices and treatment that are illegal under Saudi and international law.  Further recommend that this bill of rights should be translated into the major languages of the kingdom’s migrant communities and disseminated as broadly as possible, using advertisements in print and broadcast media and in public spaces throughout the kingdom.
  • Study the provisions of the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, and make recommendations to the government about its ratification.

To United Nations Treaty Monitoring Bodies

To the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

  • Urge the government of Saudi Arabia to submit its long-overdue report on its compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
  • Advise the government of Saudi Arabia that the report should include comprehensive information about the situation of women migrant workers in the kingdom, including the human rights violations and other problems identified in this report, and the steps that authorities have taken and will take to address them.

To the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD):

  • Advise the government of Saudi Arabia to include in its next report to CERD detailed information and analysis about the composition of the migrant communities in the kingdom, including the gender dimensions.
  • Encourage the government to describe the measures it has taken and plans to take to combat prejudices – in the workplace and beyond -- that lead to violations of the rights embodied in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Such measures should include but not be limited to those undertaken in the fields of education, culture, and cultural awareness, and information.

To the Committee against Torture (CAT):

  • Urge the government of Saudi Arabia to examine in its next report to CAT how migrant workers have suffered violations of the rights guaranteed in the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, particularly during interrogations to coerce confessions of criminal offenses.
  • Request that the government’s report also indicate clearly how it carries out its obligations under articles 13, 14, and 15 of the Convention, with respect to criminal suspects and defendants who are foreign nationals.
  • Ensure that the special problems of migrant workers are addressed in the committee’s concluding observations of government’s next report.

To the Labor and Justice Ministers of Countries of Origin, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka

  • Disseminate this report within their countries and discuss its recommendations.
  • Raise formally with your counterparts in Saudi Arabia the importance of the kingdom launching an independent national inquiry concerning labor-related and other human rights abuses of migrant workers.
  • Urge the government of Saudi Arabia to promulgate an enforceable “bill of rights” that will be applicable to all migrant workers in the kingdom, including women and men employed in domestic service and agriculture.
  • Stress the importance of ending the forced confinement of women migrant workers, and urge Saudi authorities to make this practice a criminal offense under Saudi law.
  • Urge that Saudi authorities, particularly the ministry of interior, fully uphold the kingdom’s legal responsibilities under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
  • Urge Saudi authorities to afford to migrant workers all the rights set forth in the kingdom’s new criminal procedure code.
  • Request immediate and full disclosure of all relevant information about your country’s citizens who have been sentenced to death in shari’a courts and are awaiting execution.  
  • With respect to these death penalty cases, request without delay the minutes of the court hearings of these defendants, pursuant to article 156 of the new criminal procedure code.  Article 156 states: “Court hearings shall be attended by a clerk who records the minutes under the supervision of the Chairman of the hearing.  This record shall indicate the name of the judge(s) of whom the court is composed, the name of the prosecutor, place and time of the hearing, names of the litigants present and their advocates, their statements and claims, a summary of their pleadings, the evidence – including testimony of witnesses, any action taken during the hearing, and wordings and bases of the judgment.  Each page of this record shall be signed by the Chairman, by the members of the court, and by the clerk of the court.”
  • Strengthen the support mechanisms for migrant workers in Saudi Arabia .


<<previous  |  index  |  next>>July 2004