UAE LOCAL AUTHORITIES ADDRESSING DOMESTIC WORKER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABU DHABI 000528

SIPDIS

STATE FOR G/TIP, INL, DRL, NEA/RA AND NEA/ARPI

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/15/2016
TAGS: PHUM ELAB PGOV AE
SUBJECT: UAE LOCAL AUTHORITIES ADDRESSING DOMESTIC WORKER
DISPUTES AND TRAFFICKING

REF: A. 05 ABU DHABI 4979


B. ABU DHABI 277

C. 05 ABU DHABI 15286

Classified By: CLASSIFIED BY AMBASSADOR MICHELE J. SISON, REASONS 1.4 (
B) AND (D).


1. (SBU) Summary: Various government authorities continue to
make progress in addressing the issues of trafficking in
persons and domestic worker abuse. The Dubai Police Human
Rights Department is working to improve services to
trafficking victims, concentrating its efforts on
sex-trafficking. However, the police do not believe most
prostitutes are trafficked. The Philippines Consulate
General's labor office is seeing improvement in Dubai
Immigration's cooperation in resolving domestic worker
complaints, but it reports that federal authorities refuse to
even address the issue, instead deferring to local
authorities. The Bangladeshi Consulate General continues to
see child camel jockeys turned in for repatriation as the
die-hard camel farm owners give up hope of ever racing
children again. Contrarily, Pakistani human rights activist
Ansar Burney continues to claim to have witnessed dozens of
children being used during daylight hours at prominent
tracks. End Summary.


2. (SBU) Post has delivered the G/TIP interim assessment (ref
C) to (in Abu Dhabi): Director of International Affairs for
the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince's Court, Yousef Al Otaiba;
Ambassador designate to the U.S., Saqr Ghobash; U/S for
Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Rashid al-Noaimi; and MFA Director
of International Organizations, Yacub al-Hosani, (who also
sits on the national anti-trafficking committee); and (in
Dubai): Khalfan Hareb, Chief of Mohammed bin Rashid
al-Maktoum's diwan, Dhahi Khalfan, and Saeed bin Beleilah,
Head of Dubai Immigration. The only reaction to date has been
from Yacub al-Hosani, who told PolChief that the USG was not
giving the UAE enough credit for protecting trafficked women.
In response to the G/TIP call for the establishment of
shelters, al-Hosani stated that the UAE prefers to lodge
victims of trafficking in hotels rather than establish
shelters. He said that these women "should be treated with
dignity" and lodging them temporarily in nice hotels is the
UAE's way of showing how it cares for the women.

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Trafficking of Women
--------------

3. (SBU) On January 29, PolOffs from Abu Dhabi and Dubai met
with Major Aref Mohammed Baqr, Deputy Director of the Dubai
Police Human Rights Department, to discuss the
anti-trafficking efforts of the Dubai Police. The Human
Rights Department, while primarily dealing with
non-trafficking issues, also assists any trafficking victims
that come to them seeking assistance. According to Major
Aref, the Human Rights Department each year assists
approximately 100 prostitutes who claim to be trafficking
victims and are seeking assistance. The Human Rights section
assists the women in obtaining the necessary travel documents
to return to their countries of origin and refers their
investigation to the Dubai Police CID Anti-Trafficking
Section. He noted that the Anti-Trafficking Section at CID
almost exclusively investigates the trafficking of women,
particularly prostitutes, while investigations regarding
trafficking of men and children are usually handled by Dubai
Immigration.


4. (SBU) Major Aref explained that most women that come to
his section claiming to be trafficking victims, either come
without passports, or with passports containing long-expired
visas. In these cases the HR department assists them in
securing travel documents, and, contrary to past practices,
will have their passports or travel documents exit-stamped as
immigration violators and not as prostitutes so as not to
further stigmatize the victims. Now that this is widely
known, he believes that most of the women who come to his
office are not actually trafficking victims, but are simply
seeking a way to return home without being branded a
prostitute. (Comment: Judging by Aref's remarks, he clearly
did not understand that a woman who has had her travel
documents taken away and is not free to leave is by
definition a trafficking victim. It was also clear that his
concept of trafficking is tied to prostitution or child camel
jockeys only. End Comment.)


5. (SBU) Major Aref explained that to combat future
trafficking, Dubai Immigration is now limiting companies to
only five visas initially, with additional visas available
later after the company has established itself. Furthermore,
Immigration automatically suspends all transactions for any
company caught sponsoring a trafficking victim. He claims
that the overwhelming number of trafficking victims continue
to enter on tourist visas, usually in small numbers mixed in
with a larger legitimate tourist group.

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Domestic Workers
--------------

6. (SBU) Also on January 29, PolOffs met with Vicente Cabe,
Labor Attache at the Philippines Consulate in Dubai. Cabe
stated that the Dubai Police and Immigration have
considerably improved their dealings with his office
regarding runaway domestic servants. Contrary to past
practices when domestic worker complaints were routinely
resolved by simply deporting the worker, Cabe claims that as
many as 80% of the complaints presented to Immigration in the
last year were resolved in the laborer's favor. The
resolutions either directly addressed the cause of the
complaint, or allowed the worker to change his or her sponsor
without penalty.


7. (SBU) Elena Calingasan, the Labor Attache at the
Philippines Embassy in Abu Dhabi, told PolOff and EconOff
that while local immigration and police officials have been
responsive to domestic laborer complaints, federal officials
have explicitly refused to deal with the issue. According to
Calingasan, Ministry of Labor officials will not even
schedule a meeting to talk about domestic laborer issues
because domestic workers are not covered under the Labor Law.
(Note: Matters affecting domestic workers are currently
handled by the Ministry of Interior. End note.) She further
thinks that it is unlikely that domestic workers will ever be
covered under a labor law as long as federal labor officials
refuse to even discuss the issue. On a positive note,
Calingasan claims that domestic workers are generally
afforded the same opportunities as provided under the Labor
Law in regards to transferring sponsorship. Specifically,
domestic workers are allowed to transfer their sponsorship to
another sponsor either at the completion of their contract,
or with a letter of no objection, without suffering a
six-month or one-year ban as had been imposed in the past


8. (SBU) Officials at the Philippines Labor Office in Abu
Dhabi stated that about 10 percent of the approximately
100,000 Filipino laborers in the UAE work as domestic
servants. Of this 10 percent, only about 1,000 workers file
labor complaints or ask for assistance annually. The
officials noted that the number of Filipina domestic workers
who seek assistance through unofficial channels could easily
double that figure. Most of the labor complaints filed are
for nonpayment of back wages, or for allegations of physical
or sexual abuse. The Philippines Labor Office handles cases
of payment of back wages directly, and refers reports of
abuse to the police. Calingasan stated that in abuse cases,
most of the abusers have been third-country Arab nationals,
particularly Egyptians and Lebanese. She added that while
local immigration and police officials in the city of Abu
Dhabi have been quick to react to complaints, officials in
al-Ain (a conservative city in the interior of the emirate of
Abu Dhabi) have been either reluctant or very slow to respond
to requests from the Labor Office.

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Child Camel Jockeys?
--------------

9. (SBU) Between February 2 and 5, Pakistani NGO activist
Ansar Burney contacted Pol Chief to report that he had
witnessed "at least three dozen" boys being used as jockeys
to train racing camels. When pressed for details, Burney
claimed that on February 5 he had seen children in use during
daylight hours at Nad al-Sheba track in Dubai and al-Wathba
track in Abu Dhabi, in addition to nighttime training at
undisclosed locations. He further stated that there were
German and French television crews present filming the event
for a documentary, but would not provide any further detail
about the filming crews. Dubai PolEconoff visited Nad
al-Sheba on February 7 and witnessed the camel training at
the track. The camels were all jockeyed by either robots, or
were being led with weighted dummies in place of a jockey.
There were no children apparent. This is consistent with
other events witnessed by Embassy and UNICEF officials (ref
B). Burney has also posted poor-quality videos on his
website www.cameljockeys.org that show camels being trained
in the dark at a track purported to be in the UAE. (Comment:
We viewed the videos and had a hard time making out anything
except the silhouette of camels with someone/something riding
them. The video leaves the viewer to assume that the riders
must be children, otherwise why would they training in the
dark? End Comment).


10. (C) On February 6, PolEconOff met with the labor attache
for Bangladesh in Dubai who mentioned that just that morning
three former camel jockeys had been turned in for
repatriation. Reportedly, the boys came from a remote area
of Ras al-Khaimah emirate, where a few diehard camel farm
owners had held them with the hope that they would eventually
be able to return them to racing. They supposedly have now
given up hope of ever having child jockeys race again and are
turning in the remaining children, fearing prosecution. The
labor attache stated that if there were anymore children
still being hidden, it would likely be in the Digdagga area
of Ras al-Khaimah or near the camel track in Ajman emirate.
On February 14, Col. Najm al-Seyyar, Director of the Bani Yas
Social Support Center and MoI official overseeing child
jockey repatriation, stated that no children had been
reported to the Ministry of Interior, or brought to the
Social Support Center within the last couple of months. He
further stated that MoI investigators continue random
inspections of both camel farms and race tracks, and that
although they had not found any new children working in camel
racing, they would immediately investigate any claims of
children still working in the industry.


11. (SBU) Comment: We continue to receive reports of children
being used as camel jockeys from Ansar Burney (ref A),but
have not yet been provided with any evidence to substantiate
the claims despite several requests to Burney over the past
three months. The reports, while contrary to the experiences
of officers at the Embassy and the Consulate, as well as
UNICEF representatives, are troubling given the prominence of
the two tracks mentioned. We will continue to follow up on
every lead, and will make sure that all reports from Ansar
Burney are also brought to the attention of the Ministry of
Interior and Dubai Police. End Comment.
SISON