Tricked and Trapped: Human Trafficking in the Middle East, ‎pdf 4.1 MB

In Jordan, an official from Tamkeen, an NGO providing assistance to
migrant workers, also argued that PEAs charge high recruitment costs to the
employers, averaging anywhere between US$5,000 and US$7,000. They are
able to do this because the Ministry of Labour regulations prohibit employers
from recruiting domestic workers directly. Tamkeen has found it difficult
to hold unscrupulous PEAs to account. Although the NGO files cases in
court, “no cases related to trafficking and sexual or physical abuse have been
won, as the recruitment agents are rich and their hands are everywhere. They
can buy off witnesses.” 40 The lack of successful judicial recourse against such
recruitment agencies allows them to continue their practices unhindered.
It also highlights the gaps that remain between the regulations recently
introduced to govern the PEAs in Jordan and their implementation. Similar
gaps are noticeable in the other countries of the region, which also struggle to
regulate these agencies effectively.
‘Unfree’ recruitment
The research did not find any evidence of coercive practices during the
recruitment process of domestic workers, such as the abduction or sale of
a worker. However, some migrant workers interviewed had been deceived
during their recruitment, and therefore could be considered as subject to
‘unfree’ recruitment. The second and third processes of human trafficking for
forced domestic labour involve the deception of migrant workers about either
the nature of the job or the working and living conditions in the country of
destination, or both. This entails the breach of an agreement made either
orally or in a contract signed in the country of origin or destination.
The Dubai Foundation for Women and Children reported this type of
deception in their annual report of 2011, which found that eight out of the
23 trafficked victims were told that they would work as domestic workers and
instead were forced into sex work. 41
Of those domestic workers interviewed by the research team, not all had
signed contracts with their employers or recruitment agencies. Out of those
who did, several women said they could not understand the contract’s
content, either because they were illiterate or because the document was in a
foreign language. Those domestic workers who had been deceived about the
nature of their job explained that they were expecting to work in some other
capacity, as a teacher, sales employee, nanny, nurse or assistant to the elderly
(box 3.2). 42 “The recruiter told me that I will be a teacher and can give private
40
Interview with an official of Tamkeen, Jordan, 10 Nov. 2011.
41
Dubai Foundation for Women and Children: DFWAC 2011 Report on Victims of
Human Trafficking (Dubai, 2011), p. 15.
42
Morshed (ed.): ECHO: Survivors voice, p. 4.
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