Dubai's Secret Slave Trade

It seems like every day we hear about Dubai building the worlds tallest building, largest aquarium, and even the largest indoor ski resort. What we don't hear about are the squalid, inhumane conditions faced by the foreign laborers who make this all possible. This article addresses the UAEs draconic approach to urban development.

Glitz and Glamour: A 21st Century Slave Story

In no more than a decade, the desert city of Dubai has grown from humble beginnings to, arguably, the most gratuitous show of wealth the world over. Nestled comfortably along the Arabian Gulf, atop the northeast corner of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai at first seems far from the idealized billionaire getaway. Underneath the glitz and glamour, however, a far more inhumane reality exists. With migrant workers composing 90 per cent of the labor force, unprecedented expansion has been enabled at little cost to the contractor. The treatment of these impoverished workers, however, tells an entirely different story.

Despite a tradition of strict, religious conservatism, Dubai has become as a magnet for the upper echelons of wealth. From man made islands made to resemble the earth to even an indoor ski resort, Dubai has exhibited amphetamine like urban development. To be sure, extraordinary displays of growth require extraordinary means; in Dubai's case, unprecedented growth rests entirely upon a hidden culture of slave labor.

According to the Emirates Center for Human Rights (ECHR), "the migrant population consists of 1.75 million Indians, 1.25 million Pakistanis, 500,000 Bangladeshis; 1 million other Asian; 500,000 European and African." Following promises of high paying construction labor, foreign nationals flood into the desert city.

It is not hard to imagine the attractiveness of Dubai to foreign nationals. For a poor Indian villager, used to living on less two or three dollars a day, the promise of a meager $600 a month is, without question, worth the travel.

In an almost dystopian fashion, through the Kafala Sponsorship Program, employers are given unprecedented sovereignty in determining the expats livelihood. "In effect, employers are given almost total control over migrant workers' pay, living conditions, nutrition, capacity to change employment, and their ability to go home," the ECHR reported.

Under the pretences of attractive wages, recruiting agencies convince these workers to pay, often through employee loans, exorbitant travel and visa fees for their trip to Dubai. Once these workers arrive, however, it does not take long for reality of the situation to set in. With actual wages somewhere between US$175 and $220 a month, workers find themselves trapped. In essence, with nearly 3 million migrant workers bearing low wages and high debt to the employer, Dubai operates on an army of indentured servants.

What's more, when the worker arrives in Dubai, their freedom is essentially stripped from them. "Forced labor is also the result of employers withholding laborers' passports, whereby workers choosing to leave their employers risk illegal residency status," reports the ECHR.

Without passports, freedom, or money, workers are forced to live in a highly compromised living environment and are subject to harsh working conditions. In a report by the Human Rights Watch, accommodations were described as "something similar to labor camp conditions."

While human rights organizations criticism of the Emirati growth scheme abound, the true human cost has yet to be truly addressed. In point of fact, the maltreatment and overt trickery played on migrant workers exposes the true nature of Dubai. Despite the flush appearance of Dubai's cityscape, it is rotten from within. From now on, when you hear about the tallest building on the planet, the Burj Khalifa, be sure to think about the many nameless enslaved migrant workers who built it.