Prompted by international scrutiny of working conditions on flagship projects in Qatar and the UAE, in 2016, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre surveyed construction companies on their approach to safeguarding migrant workers’ rights in both countries.
Two years on and with a second survey, the findings show that while a consistent but small group of construction companies demonstrate real commitment to tackling the risks to migrant workers in their operations, the overwhelming majority operate with high risks to human rights and continued disregard for workers’ welfare. In both years, more than 70% of surveyed companies did not respond and over 60% did not have a public commitment to human rights.
This briefing analyses the survey responses and public human rights commitments of construction companies with current projects in the region and makes recommendations to companies, clients and governments to advance the rights of migrant workers.
An overview of the risks to migrant workers on construction projects across the Gulf. Migrant workers make up between 60% and 90% of the workforce in the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Low-wage construction workers are at...
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has quizzed 100 construction companies operating in Qatar and the UAE on the measures they are taking to stop exploitation of migrant workers. Only 22 responded, indicating a shocking level of inaction. Despite increasing...
This report gives an insight into the link between corporate practices in the Arabian Gulf’s engineering and construction sector and the recruitment – in South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh – of many of the migrant workers who staff the industry’s projects.
Since its establishment in 2007, the Working Group on Child Trafficking as a sub-group of the Task Force on Combating Human Trafficking has been working to gather background information on the phenomenon of child trafficking in Austria through the e...Read More
The Guidelines for the Development of a Transnational Referral Mechanism for Trafficked Persons: South-Eastern Europe (TRM Guidelines) have been elaborated in the framework of the Programme to Support the Development of Transnational Referral Mechan...Read More
The exploitation of persons– for labor or sexual purposes– is the third-largest illegal “business” after drug and arms trafficking. While slavery was officially abolished in the United States 150 years ago, in 2012 the International Labor Or...Read More
The purpose of this blueprint is to provide practical support to: (a) CSR/Sustainability managers in driving the effort of embedding human rights across the organisation and (b) Human Resource, Purchasing and Risk/Legal managers in clarifying their...Read More
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