Sponsorship reform and internal labour market mobility for migrant workers in the Arab States

Although immigration sponsorship systems are common in many parts of the world, the type of sponsorship arrangements prevalent in the Middle East, often referred to as the kafala system, severely limits migrant workers’ opportunity to leave an employer, creates risks of human rights abuses and labour exploitation, including forced labour, and impedes their internal labour market mobility. Internal labour market mobility can loosely be defined as migrant workers’ ability to terminate employment, switch to a different employer, renew their work permit or leave the destination country without the approval of their employer, including during the contract period.

Why is the issue important?

Removing existing restrictions and enabling more migrant workers to change jobs in the country of destination can bring critical benefits to the effective functioning of labour markets, reduce the cost and time required for recruitment, and ensure more effective jobs matching. Enabling a more dynamic and fluid labour market has become an ever-greater priority as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a context where some employers had to let go of workers because of financial difficulties, while other employers struggled to fill vacancies because of restrictions on international recruitment.

A number of countries in the region are making deep reforms to achieve more flexibility in their labour markets while also addressing the potential for abuse inherent in an unbalanced employment relationship, but more needs to be done both on the legislative and implementation side. In particular, there is an urgent need to do away with the ‘absconding regime’ which gives employers the power to declare their workers as having ‘run away’, causing automatic termination of their residence and work permits.

A standards-driven approach

The human rights issues associated with the kafala (sponsorship) system, including the operation of the absconding framework, have been highlighted by a number of international labour bodies, such as the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR); by the UN human rights treaty bodies, such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Human Rights Committee (HRC), the Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW), and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR); by the UN Human Rights Council special procedures mandate holders, such as the UN Special Rapporteurs on trafficking in persons and the human rights of migrants; and in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UN Human Rights Council. They have all drawn attention to the need for urgent reform of the sponsorship system due to the risk to migrant workers of abuse, exploitation, and forced labour and trafficking in persons.

Several recent CEACR comments have reaffirmed the incompatibility of the absconding framework with key ILO Conventions ratified by most Arab States, including two fundamental Conventions, namely the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29) and the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111).

For example, the CEACR has underlined that where a system of employment of migrant workers places those workers in a particularly vulnerable position and provides employers with the opportunity to exert disproportionate power over them, this could result in discrimination based on the grounds enumerated in the Convention, including race, colour, national extraction and sex.

Within the context of forced labour, the Committee has repeatedly noted that migrant workers, including migrant domestic workers must – both in law and in practice – be free to exercise “their right to freely terminate their employment, so that they do not fall into abusive practices that may arise from the sponsorship system”.

CEDAW has also commented on the problematic use of the absconding framework as a retaliatory measure by employers in the Arab States, calling on governments to repeal provisions setting criminal penalties for absconding. Additionally, in 2017, the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons raised concerns that the kafala (sponsorship) system creates an unequal power dynamic between the employer and the migrant worker that prevents migrants from changing employers.

The two ILO Conventions concerning migrant workers, which the Arab States have not ratified, refer to internal labour market mobility for migrant workers, in particular the Migrant Workers (Supplementary Provisions) Convention, 1975 (No. 143), which builds on the equal treatment provisions in the Migration for Employment Convention (Revised), 1949 (No. 97). In its Part II, Convention No. 143 aims to ensure equal opportunity and treatment of migrant workers in a regular situation through the adoption of a national policy, including affording migrant workers in regular situations free access to the labour market subject to certain conditions.

New momentum for reforms in the GCC

Some examples of reforms include:

• Qatar: All workers, including domestic workers, can change employers (a) at the end of their six-month probation period, after giving written notice (one or two months, depending on their length of service), or (b) during the probation period (one month of notice), in which case the future employer must pay the current employer compensation not exceeding two months of the worker’s basic wage. Further information here
• Saudi Arabia: Workers covered by the Labour Law can change employers after one year of service with the employer, without the permission of the first employer. This right is subject to certain conditions being met, including that the new employer submits a job offer, and the notice period is complied with. Domestic workers and others excluded from the Labour Law, however, are not covered by these reforms.

Further information on each country’s legal framework on internal labour market mobility can be found here: Country briefs of the regulatory frameworks governing migrant workers in the Arab States.

An emerging evidence base

The ILO has supported the development of new evidence-based research on the topic of sponsorship reform and internal labour market mobility for migrant workers:

• Country briefs of the regulatory frameworks governing migrant workers in the Arab States (2023-2024).
• Thematic brief (2021): Promoting internal labour market mobility in the Arab States.
• Academic paper (2021): Reforming the sponsorship system in the Gulf Council Cooperation countries: Opportunities and challenges as a result of COVID-19 and the fiscal crisis.
• White paper (2017): Employer-Migrant Worker Relationships in the Middle East: Exploring scope for internal labour market mobility and fair migration.
• Policy brief (2024): Employer survey of internal labour market mobility: promoting a more flexible workforce in Kuwait.
• Policy brief (forthcoming): Doing away with absconding: A roadmap to a rights-based approach to labour contract termination in the Arab States, in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), UN Women and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Additionally, ILO’s global reports also highlight the issues inherent in sponsorship systems and the need for workers to have the freedom to change employer:

• Synthesis report (2023) Temporary labour migration: Unpacking complexities.
• ILO Governing Body Paper (13 October 2022) and Decision concerning temporary labour migration (3 November 2022).

Key recommendations

1. A migrant worker’s entry, residence and work permit should not be tied to a specific employer: One option could be to introduce a so-called ‘employment-based visa’ whereby a migrant worker applies for and renews visas under his or her own name. Under this system, the recruitment process would still be ‘employer-led’ as the migrant worker would need to demonstrate that they have a legitimate job offer in order to begin the visa application procedure, yet there would be no requirement to specify the name of an individual employer on the migrant worker’s entry papers, immigration visa, work visa, or passport for the purposes of sponsorship.
2. A migrant worker should be responsible for renewing his or her own visas, work and residence permits to prevent a situation whereby a worker becomes undocumented and falls into irregular migration status due to an act of negligence by the employer. Under this option, the migrant worker is responsible for the renewal (at reasonable or no cost) of his or her own visas.
3. A migrant worker should be able to terminate his/her employment contract by giving the requisite notice and to change employer without the consent of her/his current employer, and without losing valid immigration status. A migrant worker should be able to identify new employers independently and elect whether or not to work for them. In this way, the migrant worker would no longer be inextricably linked to a single employer.
4. A migrant worker should be able to exit the country in all cases without seeking approval from her/his employer.
5. Employer-migrant worker relations should be governed by the labour law and a standard employment contract – power over residency status (such as the power to file an ‘absconding’ claim) should not be in the hands of the employer.