Suicides among migrants in Kuwait persist at an alarming rate
Over the past two months, there have been 23 reported cases of suicide or attempted suicide by migrant workers in Kuwait, meaning that about every 2.5 days a migrant worker commits or attempts suicide in Kuwait. Migrant workers are often driven to suicide by harsh living and working conditions and abuse at the hand of their sponsors. To this day we’ve heard of zero cases where the sponsors of the workers faced consequences for driving their worker to suicide.
Previous reports by Migrant-Rights.org have exposed an alarming trend of suicides by migrant workers in Kuwait. In May 2010 alone, we documented 17 cases of suicide and attempted suicide by domestic workers in Kuwait. During April, 12 migrant workers attempted or succeeded in ending their lives in Kuwait. During March and the end of February, there were 13 reported cases of suicide and suicide attempt by migrants in the emirate. And during November of 2008 we’ve covered another 13 cases of suicide and attempted suicides by expatriate workers.
On June 2, an Asian maid killed herself by swallowing detergent in her sponsor’s home in Waha, al-Jahra. On the same day, an unidentified woman attempted to kill herself by swallowing chemicals and was taken to the hospital where her stomach was washed. The fact that the paper did not bother identifying the woman indicates that she is a foreigner. On June 6 in was reported that an Asian woman jumped to her death from a residential building in al-Jahra. A day later, on June 7, it was reported that a Filipino maid threatened to kill herself after an argument with her sponsor’s wife in their home in Ardiya. The security forces that arrived at the scene managed to talk the maid out of taking her life.
On June 9, a Filipina maid ended her life by jumping from the fifth floor of her sponsor’s house in Hawali. Two days later, on June 11, a Filipina maid “fell” to her death from the fifth floor in her sponsor’s house in Mahboula.
On June 14, a Sri-Lankan domestic worker hanged himself to death from the ceiling in his sponsor’s home in Ferdous. A day later it was reported that a 26-year-old Ethiopian maid attempted to kill herself by swallowing poison. She was rushed to the hospital in time. The paper claimed that the maid suffered from psychological problems. The next day a 33-year-old Indian woman was rushed to the hospital after attempting to end her life by swallowing chemicals. On June 22, a 30-year-old Filipino housemaid attempted to kill herself by overdosing on pills. She was found unconscious and was rushed to the hospital in time.
The month of July began with a report on the 1st about the suicide of an Indian migrant in his apartment in Faranwiya. On July 3, an Asian domestic worker attempted to take her own life in her sponsor’s house in Naim-Jahara by drinking insecticide. A day later, on July 4, an Ethiopian maid hanged herself to death shortly after arriving to her sponsor’s house in al-Jahra.
On July 6, there were three reported cases of suicide by migrant workers. A 39-year-old Indian worker swallowed detergent and then sustained further severe injuries when falling from a building of a private university in Salmiya. The woman was rushed to the ICU in Mubarak al-Kabeer hospital. On the same day, al-Qabas daily reported about the suicide by hanging of an Asian worker in the office of a construction company he worked in, and the attempted suicide of an Ethiopian maid who swallowed insecticide in her sponsor’s house in Naim-Jahra.
On July 16, a Filipino maid in her 30s was hospitalized for attempting to kill herself by overdosing on drugs. Three days later, on July 19, an Indonesian maid suffered several fractures after attempting to end her life by jumping off the third floor of her sponsor’s home in the Sabah Al-Nasser area. The next day, a 35-year-old Asian man was taken to the Mubarak al-Kabeer hospital after slashing his right hand in an attempt to kill himself. Three days later, of July 22, it was reported that a 34-year-old Sri Lankan housemaid killed herself by jumping from the third floor of her sponsor’s house in the Abdullah Mubarak area.
On July 24, a 23-year-old Nepalese domestic worker ended her life by hanging in her sponsor’s house in Oyoun, al-Jahra. On the next day, a 30-year-old Nepalese maid hanged herself to death from a ceiling-fan in her sponsor’s house in al-Jahra (report in Arabic contains disturbing photograph, beware). On July 29, an Asian man hanged himself to death from a ceiling fan in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh. Once again, the report claims the victim suffered from psychological problems.
Reports about these miserable workers are pushed to the back pages of newspapers in Kuwait, and the Gulf region in general. The workers are nameless in their death as they are in their lives, with the papers not bothering to learn the name of the workers and sometimes even their age and nationality. Other than one report, no one in the Kuwaiti media tries to understand the reasons for this tragic phenomena. Reports suggest that the reason for suicides are psychological problems of the victims, without trying to understand what about the treatment of the sponsor leads these migrant workers to suicide en masse.
Domestic workers in Kuwait are excluded from the protection of its labor laws. A recent U.S. State Department report detailed the conditions many migrant workers are subjected to in Kuwait:
Although these migrants enter Kuwait voluntarily, upon arrival some are subjected to conditions of forced labor by their sponsors and labor agents, including through such practices as non-payment of wages, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and restrictions on movement, such as the withholding of passports. Labor recruitment agencies and their subagents at the community level in South Asia may coerce or defraud workers into accepting work in Kuwait that turns out to be exploitative and, in some instances, constitutes involuntary servitude.
Given this type of treatment, many workers see no choice out of their desperate situation other than taking their lives.
Originally posted on Migrant-Rights.org
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Dear Fatima,
Thank you for sharing these horrifying accounts of events with us. Your post reminded me of an article in the New York Times Newspaper that gave accounts, not of suicides, but of harsh treatments and of abandoning their work place and seeking refuge in their national embassies. The embassies would in turn do what they can, short of contacting the authorities of course, to help these workers (mostly women I may add).
There is a reason, stemming from economics, behind this abuse and I would like to identify this reason in an effort to spell out a solution to this problem.
Economic Reason – The simple truth is, there are a large number of laborers and not enough employers in the GCC for employers to have economically backed reasons to treat their employees well by paying their wages, respecting their rights as humans, and refraining from abusing them. If there were a limited number of employees, the employer would need to reconsider abusing his/her employees in order to keep them from running away or doing something worse. In my home we employ cleaners and drivers and I remember at one point my mother was saying that one of the maids was thinking of quitting and going back home. Not one member of the family thought this was a big deal because we knew that there were going to be tens, if not hundreds of other available men/women willing to do the job for the same wage. The large quantity of supply also inspires a feeling of desperation in the employee who, having traveled thousands of miles away from home and family, needs, desperately, to make a living in order to live and support his/her family back home. This desperation causes the employees to accept abuse, low pay, sexual harassment and other violations of internationally accepted labor regulations.
In this situation, responsible authorities have one option and that is to decrease the supply by establishing/ raising the price floor for inviting laborers into the country and simultaneously establishing labor laws that protect the most basic of human rights for these laborers. There are a large number of ways to go about approaching this. Establishing a price floor will help reduce the number of workers coming into the country by forcing people to employ those who are already in the country. What this will do is set a limit on the market of available labor thereby economically guaranteeing that laborers will at first be treated with more respect due to their increased cost and later will be paid higher wages. There remains the problem of the people who can afford to pay higher wages for the labor and continue to abuse their employees and drive them to run away or commit suicide. These people need to be taken care of through a legal framework designed to inflict financial pain on them if the employee reports and proves abusive behavior on part of the employer.
One simple idea I had that could be instated now would be to hold the employer responsible for purchasing a return ticket for the employee at the employees discretion would also give the employer more reason to respect his employee. KSA has the problem of illegal laborers coming in from Mecca but this could be resolved by a decree holding the employer of an illegal immigrant responsible for the employee’s well being. Methods for enforcing this are available and can be very effective if the government is serious about cracking down on labor abuse.
The first step however is that people who are responsible need to become aware of the situation and the gravity of it. We as Arabs need to comprehend that the people we are employing are also people who deserve respect and there is always the chance that the tables will turn and these people may and probably will (given our lack of values) one day become more financially powerful than us: look at India and Malaysia who both have economies stronger than that of KSA.
The stories you provided are simply put, sad. What’s more sad is the fact that we Muslims, the people who are supposed to ignore the rules of economics and finance when it comes to vice and virtue, and committing these sins in broad daylight without regard to the most basic of human rights spelled out in the Book we all have at home.
Thank you again Fatima for shedding some light on this dire issue. I hope to read more from you in the future.
Hi, thank you for reporting on these things.
Aside from raising awareness, it helps, in some other intangible way, if our thoughts are with those who suffer. And I’m sure, for those who pray, it’s a way of becoming involved, even if some are thousands of km’s away.
Take care.
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