Trafficked, Abused Maids in Kuwait Seek Legal Protection

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that as Kuwaiti families gear up for Ramadan, their abused, displaced maids are cramming into temporary shelters, desperate for reprieve from grueling work and long hours demanded by their employers. Migrant domestic workers from Nepal, the Philippines, and Indonesia have fled their jobs and are staying in cramped, ad hoc shelters, which are often just rooms in their local embassies. This follows reports that a Sri Lankan maid recently arrived at her embassy after being imprisoned by her Kuwaiti "employers" for the last 13 years and a Filipina maid was tortured and killed by her host family — who then dumped her body in the desert to make it look like an accident. Isolated cases, they're not any less shocking.

Yet, none of this should come as a surprise. In a 2010 U.S. State Department report, Kuwait was singled out as one of 12 countries that do not currently do enough to discourage and combat trafficking. In countries with a larger upper-class, where wealthy families can afford to import cheap labor from the Global South, trafficking is simply a common, if largely ignored, problem. Many people won't even call it trafficking, but when agency fees are paid to move women across borders and migrant workers are grossly mistreated in a foreign country where they have little (if any) legal protection or recourse against abusive employers, I'd like to know what else we're supposed to call it.

It isn't that all domestic workers are abused; far from it. But when workers go abroad to countries where they are minimally protected, to perform generally unregulated work, it's only natural that more cases of systemic abuse arise. Even though foreign embassies in Kuwait received 10,000 complaints from domestic workers in 2009, few of these cases are ever prosecuted. Workers fear being charged with breaking immigration laws and dread being detained and deported, and so, the cycle continues.

In New York, domestic workers recently gained some legal ground when the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights was passed by the state legislature. Even still, the Empire State is the first in the nation to approve of such legal protections for domestic workers as Californians continue to seek the passage of similar legislation. While victories for domestic workers in our own country are wonderful, imagine how tough it is for women outside of their home nations, with far fewer legal protections available.

Photo Credit: Haundreis