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Qatar’s immigration Sponsorship Law restricts migrant workers’ ability to change jobs at
will. Under Law No.4 of 2004, the Sponsorship Law, every worker who comes to Qatar must
have a local sponsor who undertakes to provide employment and supervise the worker’s
legal stay in the country, and to provide their return ticket home upon completion of
work. 180 The Sponsorship Law prohibits migrant workers from changing jobs without their
employer’s consent; even when employers fail to pay competitive wages, provide decent
conditions, or meet the conditions of the employment contract, workers cannot simply
change jobs. 181 The law requires employers to report workers who quit their job without
permission for “absconding,” an offense leading to their detention and deportation from
the country. 182 Finally, it requires workers to secure exit permits from their employers
before they can leave the country. 183
Qatar’s neighbors, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, have all amended their
sponsorship regulations so that workers can change employers without consent after
working for a certain period of time under their original sponsor. Yet Qatar lags behind,
with workers requiring their sponsor’s permission to change jobs whether they have
worked in their service for two years or twenty. Qatar remains one of just two Gulf countries,
the other being Saudi Arabia, to maintain the burdensome requirement that workers
obtain exit visas from their sponsors before they can leave the country.
Passport Confiscation, Freedom of Movement, and Forced Labor
Human Rights Watch found that employers’ failure to secure work permits for their
employees, as well as the practice of confiscating employees’ passports upon arrival,
restricted workers’ freedom of movement under international law. The ILO has also
identified confiscation of passports and other identity documents as a key indicator of
forced labor. 184 Employers hold passports to keep workers from leaving without their
permission and “protect their investment,” since they have incurred costs that may
include work permit and residence visa fees, bank guarantees, recruitment agency fees,
and training costs, or to guard against finding themselves short-staffed.
180 Law No.4 of 2009, art.s 19, 20, 23, 24.
181 Law No.4 of 2009, art.22.
182 Ibid., art.11.
183 Ibid., art.18.
184 ILO, A Global Alliance Against Forced Labour: Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental
Principles and Rights of Work (Geneva: ILO, 2005), p. 6.
71 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | JUNE 2012