KAFALA

About:

• Background: The Kafala (Sponsorship) System emerged in the 1950’s to regulate the relationship between employers and migrant workers in many countries in West Asia.
  
  
• Regions of implementation: It remains the routine practice in the Gulf countries and also in the Arab states of Jordan and Lebanon.
  
  
• Reason for introducing it: To provide temporary, rotating labour that could be rapidly brought into the country in economic boom and expelled during less affluent periods, with the event setting in motion a huge construction programme employing foreign workers.
  
  
• Features and criticism:
  • Under the Kafala system a migrant worker’s immigration status is legally bound to an individual employer or sponsor (kafeel) for their contract period.
    
    
  • The migrant worker cannot enter the country, transfer employment nor leave the country for any reason without first obtaining explicit written permission from the kafeel.
    
    
  • Often the kafeel exerts further control over the migrant worker by confiscating their passport and travel documents, despite legislation in some destination countries that declares this practice illegal.
    
    
  • The power that the Kafala system delegates to the sponsor over the migrant worker, has been likened to a contemporary form of slavery.