22/04/2021 Salary Abuses Facing Migrant Workers Ahead of Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 | HRW Despite recent reforms introduced to better protect migrant workers’ rights, the kafala system DONATE NOW Summary remains an inherently abusive system for migrant workers. Measures taken so far have failed to protect workers from abusive situations, and situations of forced labor. Qatar for instance, abolished the exit permit for most migrant workers, in which employers had the right to grant or refuse a migrant worker’s ability to leave the country.[25] However, in most cases, migrant workers cannot change jobs before the end of their contracts without their first employers’ written consent.[26] The kafala system essentially provides employers unchecked powers to wield over migrant workers, leaves workers to live under constant fear, and prevents them from formally complaining to authorities. Employers, for instance, exert control over their workers by routinely confiscating their workers’ passports, despite this being illegal, and by threats to report them to the police as “runaways.” In October 2017, Qatar committed to abolish the kafala system, among other labor reforms, as part of its technical cooperation agreement with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and to stop a complaint documenting Qatar's failure to uphold the 1930 Forced Labour Convention and the 1947 Labour Inspection Convention.[27] Under pressure, Qatar agreed to replace kafala with a system of government-issued and controlled visas for workers. Under this commitment they also agreed to lift restrictions on migrant workers’ ability to change employers and exit the country without needing an exit permit from their sponsor, ensure that the domestic worker law is implemented and reviewed by the ILO, and that recruitment practices are improved through better monitoring and regulation and the implementation of the Fair Recruitment guidelines in three migration corridors. However, at the time of writing, apart from reforms to the exit permit, reforms to the wider kafala system had still not been issued. To date, migrant workers are banned under Qatari law from joining unions and participating in strikes. Recruitment Fees: Drowning in Debt “If I had known my life in Qatar would be like this, I would never have come,” said ‘Isaac’, 33, a Kenyan plumber in Qatar.[28] Isaac feels compelled to remain in Qatar, working for an employer that pays him unfairly and arbitrarily because, like thousands of other migrant workers, the $1,125 recruitment fees he paid to obtain a job in Qatar trapped him in debt even before he arrived in the country. https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-without-wages/salary-abuses-facing-migrant-workers-ahead-qatars 15/62