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I feel like the embassies should step up more, like if your citizen is right there crying about being enslaved FFS waive the fee and give her a passport and let her stay there while you figure out how to get her home
Yes and embassies should regularly check in to make sure these women still have access to their passports and freedom of movement.
They won’t have their passports. Even highly trained professionals like doctors or oil engineers have to hand over their passports to their employers or hosts.
I didn’t know that. That needs to be changed in law.
I wouldn't be surprised if the embassies or some government officials understand what's happening and are getting kickbacks.
These abuses are well known where I'm from. The women who go to work to these countries often initially trust these destination countries as they are muslim countries, and despite the risks, the pay (if they get paid) is much better than what they can get domestically. The local government has little leverage on the matter and the problem has been going on for more than a decade. I'm still not confident anything will be done about it now that western news finally picked up on the matter.
From Google: more people are enslaved today than at any other time in history. The UN's International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation estimate that 40.3 million people are living in some form of modern slavery today, which is more than three times the figure during the transatlantic slave trade.
Absolutely disgusting that modern day slavery is still going on. My heart goes out to these women.
The article doesn't hide the fact, but also doesn't assert that of course these are women working in deeply patriarchal systems.
Yeah I think some analysis of the overall culture in even one of the countries would’ve added to the report, I feel like this could use a follow up.
I've known about this abuse for years, but reading this article is still like getting punched in the stomach. Nothing ever changes for women.
ETA - I remember reading about huge numbers of men from countries like the Philippines who have died doing construction work in the middle east. Those assholes really do treat these foreigners like slaves.
The middle east isn't the only country that treat low wage foreign workers like that. These kind of abuses exist in Europe, China, South Korea; name any country which outsources these hard labor jobs to foreigners and there's likely something similar happening. If the locals don't want to do it, some unfortunate foreigner will, and your local businessmen will close their eyes and employ them for lower than market rate because they want to make a profit. These people are not ultra-rich business owners, they are your run of the mill small-medium size companies.
I have known university graduates from underdeveloped countries getting tied up in a white collar job which requires their foreign employees to live in company lodgings and charges them rent for half their salary, and charges them further for any business related expenses. The workers put up with it because often as a foreigner you have no recourse. I do not see this as a women's rights issue alone. This is a developed country exploiting a weaker country's most precious resources: their people.