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.
In recent years, there have been many reports of workers in supply chains being abused, exploited and even trafficked. Therefore, the expectation that businesses should carry out due diligence to address adverse impacts has grown considerably. As ...Read More
The years 2015-2016 saw an unprecedented increase in the numbers of people travelling by sea and overland along the migration route to the European Union (EU), with almost one and a half million people irregularly entering EU countries. This situati...Read More
Prepared by Pekka Ylinen, Anniina Jokinen, Anna-Greta Pekkarinen, Natalia Ollus, and Katja-Pia Jenu. Identifying and investigating labour exploitation and trafficking is a challenging task. These are often international crimes in which migrant wo...Read More
Workers in apparel supply chains are among the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic, workers had to survive on poverty wages; in the first three months of the pandemic alone, workers lost at least US$3 billion in income. Po...Read More
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