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 2010, FIDH (the International Federation for Human Rights) and Justiça nos Trilhos (JnT) have been working together on the human rights abuses of the steel industry in the state of Maranhão, in Brazil. In May 2011, FIDH and JnT, with Justiç...Read More
The UN’s new “Roadmap for the Next Decade” of Busi- ness and Human Rights, published in November 2021, begins by setting out the need to raise the ambition and increase the pace of implementing respect for human rights. The road...Read More
In 2015, 193 countries committed to Target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), pledging to take effective measures to eradicate modern slavery, human trafficking, forced labour and child labour. The outbreak of COVID-19 severely impacte...Read More
This work is part of a series of Forced Labour Evidence Briefs that seek to bring academic research to bear on calls to address the root causes of the phenomenon in global supply chains and catalyse systemic change. To do so, the briefs consolidate ...Read More
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