UN rights chief Naventhem Pillay on Monday called on Gulf countries to stop requiring migrant workers to secure local sponsors, saying the system fosters abuses. She also favored lifting restrictions on women. “Some countries are reconsidering the sponsorship (or Kafala) system that rigidly binds migrants to their employers, enabling the latter to commit abuses, while preventing workers from changing jobs or leaving the country,” Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a speech at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology, north of Jeddah. “I wholeheartedly support those efforts and call on other states to replace the Kafala system with updated labor laws that can better balance rights and duties,” she said. Pillay also noted that the estimated 12 million foreign workers in the Gulf, especially domestic workers, are frequently subject to unlawful confiscation of passports, withholding of wages and other abuses. “The situation of migrant domestic workers is of particular concern because their isolation in private homes makes them even more vulnerable to physical, psychological and sexual violence,” she said. “Thus, it is of the utmost importance that in crafting and applying migration policies, governments maintain a human rights approach to migration at the front and center of their action.” Pillay, on the first stop of a six-nation tour of the Gulf, said that “discriminatory barriers continue to hamper women's right to shape their own lives and choices, and fully participate in public life and be part of public debates that influence the direction of a nation”. On the issue of lifting restrictions on women, Pillay specifically cited the practice of requiring women to have a male guardian to move around outside the home, to appear in court and often to engage in business. “It is also time to put to rest the concept of male guardianship,” Pillay said. The rights chief pointed to some improvements in the region, including the creation of national human rights institutions in several of the countries. But she noted that at the same time some countries were tightening controls on freedom of association and expression, by putting greater pressure on activists and the media who speak out on human rights violations. Hosted by the Saudi Human Rights Commission, Pillay made her speech at the new university, lauded for allowing men and women researchers from around the world to work side-by-side, unlike the stiff controls on gender mingling enforced outside the campus.
