UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons — Report on her mission to Kuwait (A/HRC/35/37/Add.1, 21 April 2017)

Context: Kuwait's economy 'relies on and attracts approximately 3 million migrants'; the largest communities were from India (825,000), Egypt (517,973), the Philippines (185,788), Bangladesh (181,265) and Syria (140,000). The report also records 'a stateless population of 93,000 persons known as "bidoons"', in three categories: descendants of those who did not apply for or lacked documents for nationality at independence in 1961; those recruited into the army or police in the 1960s who settled with their families; and children of Kuwaiti mothers and stateless or foreign fathers [5].

Forms of trafficking: Kuwait is a destination country for women and men, mainly from South and South-East Asia and Africa, trafficked 'for the purpose of labour and to a lesser extent, sexual exploitation' [6]. 'The sponsorship (kafala) system contributes to trafficking by binding migrant workers to their employers through residency and work permits'; employers can report workers as runaways before the workers can bring their own claims, leaving them in breach of immigration law and liable to deportation [7]. Restrictive immigration policy and 'the absence of an adequate framework for asylum or specific considerations for refugee claims' expose migrants to arrest and administrative deportation; access to 'article 17 passports' is limited [8]. 'Absconding charges are sometimes maliciously filed unbeknown to' domestic workers, leaving them liable to up to six months' detention, fines of up to KD 600 and expulsion [23].

Response: the report welcomes the 2013 anti-trafficking law, training for prosecutors and judges, the Public Prosecutor's mandate over all trafficking cases and exemption from court fees for domestic workers [58], but finds limited inter-agency coordination, confusion between trafficking and labour or immigration offences, and prosecution of perpetrators for lesser crimes [59]. 'Nine cases of trafficking were prosecuted between 2015 and mid-2016', with final convictions in four cases of sexual exploitation of six women and one conviction for slavery-like working conditions [60].

Recommendations include ratification of key instruments, a national anti-trafficking strategy and coordinating body, revision of immigration policy, 'the abolition of the kafala system', remedies and assistance for victims, and wider involvement of civil society.

USE IN A REPORT: an authoritative UN source on the structural drivers of labour trafficking in Kuwait and on the legal jeopardy created by absconding reports — relevant to trafficking, modern-slavery and protection claims by former migrant and domestic workers.

For practitioners in trafficking and modern-slavery cases: the report is a UN-level finding that the kafala system itself contributes to trafficking, and a documented account of how an employer's absconding report can turn a victim into an offender liable to detention, fines and expulsion — central to assessing the risk facing a worker who has left an employer. Its prosecution figures (nine cases, five convictions over some eighteen months) evidence the limits of criminal-justice protection at the time. Its bidoon figure of 93,000, taken from UNHCR's 2015 statistics, can be read alongside the government and Human Rights Watch figures recorded elsewhere on this Dossier. Later reforms to the kafala framework should be checked for any period after 2017.