Modern-day Slavery and abused domestic workers in kuwait - Essay Example

Modern-day Slavery and abused domestic workers in Kuwait The manner at which domestic workers in Kuwait are being abused in Kuwait has made the situation in the oil-rich country to be referred to modern-day slavery. These domestic workers are treated so badly that one begins to wonder whether the government of Kuwait has institutionalized slavery in the country in this modern age. This paper shall seek to establish the harsh treatments of these Kuwait domestic workers and compare the situation to slavery in the USA.

The plights of the domestic workers in Kuwait is so bad that the Kuwaiti government that should enforce laws to deal with employers that treat their domestic workers are also culpable of the crime of modern-slavery and the abuse of domestic workers in the country. There are several cases that domestic workers, who have been abused by their employers tries to escape and the Kuwaiti law allows the employers to sue these domestic workers for trying to abscond and they get these workers deported at the end of the day (Human Rights Watch, 2010).

This trend can only encourage modern-day slavery in Kuwait as there have not been stringent laws to curb the excesses of employers that abuse their domestic workers. This situation is rather different from the one in the United States of America as the government of the country has made efforts to reduce the problem of modern-day slavery to the barest minimum. The US government has given the domestic workers the right to sue their employers whenever they feel they have been maltreated by them.

Thus, the modern-day slavery in Kuwait seems to be more terrible than the one in the US and this is due to the fact that the domestic workers in US have the right to protest against harsh treatment, while the ones in Kuwait have not been granted that privilege (Human Rights Watch, 2010). It could then be said that the Kuwaiti government is treating the problem of modern-day slavery and the abuse of domestic workers with levity while the government of the US is making efforts to solve the problem.

It is so terrible in Kuwait that the abused domestic workers in Kuwait are not allowed to change their jobs without the approval of their employers. Employers in Kuwait can even withhold the salaries of their migrant domestic workers and there is no real law in place to deal with this problem (Human Rights Watch, 2010). There are even reported cases of the physical and sexual abuse of domestic workers by their employers. Domestic workers in Kuwait are also made to work for longer hours and some of them are not given breaks.

It is not like the domestic workers in the US are not also abused, but the difference is that the government of the US protect the rights of these domestic workers. The only parallelism that could be drawn between the treatment of the domestic workers in the US and those in Kuwait is in the foreign diplomats’ treatment of domestic workers in the US. The laws that cover the domestic workers of the US are not binding on the domestic workers of the foreign diplomats in the US and this is due to the diplomatic immunity that covers these diplomats.

The implication of this is that, foreign diplomats that abuse their domestic workers in the US cannot be sued for these abuses as the laws of US are not binding on them. Efforts have been made to solve the problems of domestic workers that have been abused by foreign diplomats in the US. The worst cases of modern-day slavery and trafficking in the US have been perpetrated by foreign diplomats (Langfitt, 2007). It should be noted that, the diplomatic immunity that shields these foreign diplomats from the criminal jurisdiction in the US are the ones that prevent them from being prosecuted for the crime of abusing their domestic workers (Langfitt, 2007).

It should be noted that Kuwait has the highest domestic workers to citizens’ ratio in the Middle East and the fact that the government is not taking any serious step to solve the problem of the abuse of these domestic workers leaves little to be desired. According to the Human Rights Watch, Kuwait has a population of about 1.3 million people and more than 660, 000 migrant domestic workers. This means the ratio of the migrant domestic workers to the Kuwaiti citizens is 1 to 2 (Human Rights Watch, 2010).

It then begins to beat one’s imagination the reason that the Kuwaiti government has not protected these domestic workers in the labor laws that protect other labor personnel. The problem of modern-day slavery must be solved collectively as international organizations must join hands together to solve these problems. The governments of countries like Kuwait that do not make efforts to deal with the abuse of domestic workers should be sanctioned. Similarly, the US government should look for ways to curb the excesses of foreign diplomats that abuse their domestic workers.

References Human Rights Watch. (2010, October 6). Kuwait: For Abused Domestic Workers, Nowhere to Turn; Scant Protection Against Mistreatment and Abuse. Retrieved from http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/10/06/kuwait-abused-domestic-workers- nowhere-turn Langfitt, F. (2007). Servants: Diplomat Held Us as Suburban ‘Slaves,’ NPR, Mar. 1, 2007