“Some countries are reconsidering the sponsorship (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 a university near Jeddah.
“I wholeheartedly support those efforts and call on other states to replace the Kafala system with updated labour 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 centre of their action.”
Pillay spoke to a small audience at the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology, on the first stop of a tour of the Gulf.
The rights chief pointed to some improvements in the region, including the creation of national human rights institutions in several of the countries.
She also pointed to an “encouraging level” of governmental efforts to bolster childrens’ rights, stop human trafficking, and improve economic rights.
And she praised efforts to expand women’s education, which she called “not only fair” but also good policy to improve the community and national wellbeing and prosperity.
But she noted that at the same time some countries were tightening controls on freedom of association and expression, 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 by religious conservatives outside the campus.
With entrance to the campus tightly controlled, however, few Saudis have ever been inside and only about 30 students and faculty, most of them non-Saudis, were on hand for the speech.
After the speech she visited the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah (OIC), and was then to depart for a one-day stop in Qatar.
Human rights chief also called for lifting restrictions on women and to improve the position of millions of foreign workers in the region.
“Women in the region are still unable to fully enjoy their human rights,” Pillay said.
“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,” she said.
On her first-ever visit to Saudi Arabia, she said other Muslim states in the world have improved women’s rights via “dynamic interpretations of Islamic traditions.”
In those countries, governments and Islamic legal experts “demonstrated that far from being innovations, such legislation was compatible with Islamic jurisprudence and, indeed, stemmed from it.”
She 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. Such rules are enforced most commonly in Saudi Arabia. “It is also time to put to rest the concept of male guardianship,” Pillay said.
