Maids in Middle East and Asia Face Inhumane Working Conditions

A recent Human Rights Watch report warned that millions of domestic workers in Asia and the Middle East are subject to abuse, violence, and inhumane working conditions.

These maids, who come largely from the Philippines, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Ethiopia, are brought to their host countries — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and Singapore — on a "sponsorship" system that essentially renders them indentured servants. The maids' passports are confiscated when they arrive, and they often owe exorbitant fees to recruitment agencies. This sponsorship system encourages trafficking and forced labor and confinement.

Working conditions are terrible. Because domestic work is not included in most countries' labor laws, maids often work twenty-hour days without a single day off per week. Physical and sexual abuse are common, as many maids don't speak the local language and cannot get access to foreign legal systems and aid to speak out against abuse. Cases which do end up in court often take years to litigate; years in which the maids are unable to work and are trapped in shelters. And in certain countries, counter-allegations of adultery or sex out of wedlock could lead to the maids facing punishment, as was the case of the Filipino woman in Saudi Arabia who received 100 lashes for being raped by a coworker.

Human Rights Watch has called for reforms in the host countries, including transferring sponsorship from employers to "closely monitored employment agencies"; including domestic work in labor laws to regulate work hours and conditions; increasing workers' access to the criminal justice system; and facilitating repatriation.

In an interesting and disturbing twist, I noticed while reading up on this story that most U.S news articles ignored the fact that the HRW report addressed the situation of maids in both the Middle East and Asia, and included Singapore and Malaysia among the countries in need of reform. Yahoo!, Fox news (oh so surprising), the Miami Herald, and a host of other regional and local newspapers all picked up the same AP story (which obviously was not very well researched) about maids in the Middle East (no mention of Asia) being subject to abuse. Comments on these articles said things like, "Muslims, protect your women."

This decision to talk only about the Middle East is an obvious attempt to demonize Muslims and Islam. Yes, the situation of female maids in the Middle East is often atrocious; but so is the situation of female maids in Asia, and for that matter, of Filipino workers enslaved in U.S country clubs. I'm not pointing this out to trivialize the suffering of these workers, but rather to show that the U.S strategy of smugly pointing the finger at the Middle East and, less directly, at Muslims, is calculated, dangerous and hypocritical. As usual, the U.S media shows itself to be less interested in getting to the root of the problem  — serious human rights violations  — and more concerned with furthering the U.S' geopolitical agenda.

Photo credit: JMRosenfield