The extensive 26-page report surveyed the conditions of domestic workers in Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain (as well as Malaysia and Singapore). The report remarked that the conditions of migrant domestic workers are gradually, albeit slowly, improving. However, domestic workers are still extremely vulnerable and under-protected in the Middle East.

The report details how migrant domestic workers can be subjected to exploitation by several actors, starting from recruitment agencies in their own countries and up to policemen in their country of destination if the approach to report abuse. As the report states “the failure to properly regulate paid domestic work facilitates egregious abuse and exploitation, and means domestic workers who encounter such abuse have few or no means for seeking redress.”

The vulnerability begins at home, where recruitment agencies often provide false information to migrant workers about their future conditions and pay. Those agencies usually demand a high fee for securing the work visa, forcing the future workers to go into debt. The burden of debt to the agency makes the domestic worker fearful about reporting abuse and possibly losing their job and being unable to repay the “loan” to the agency. Once a worker arrives to his county of destination, recruitment agencies sometimes substitute the contracts the woman signed back home with a new contract with poorer conditions. We have covered a case of such worker, Grace from the Philippines. She was promised a job in Qatar as an executive secretary for 700 QAR per month, but upon arrival she was informed that she’ll be taking care of a child, with no days off and for 600 QAR ($165) per month.

Domestic workers in the surveyed countries require a local sponsor, to whom their work visa is tied. The sponsorship creates dependency and vulnerability and makes exploitation much more likely. As the report remarked “As the immigration sponsor, the employer can typically have the domestic worker repatriated at will, provide or withhold consent on whether she can change jobs, and in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, obstruct her ability to leave the country. In practice, termination of employment often means the worker is obliged to leave the country immediately with no opportunity to seek redress for abuses or settlement of unpaid wages… Migrant domestic workers who leave their employment without their employer’s consent lose their legal status, making them subject to immigration penalties and deportation.”

We’ve previously reported how an unpaid Indian worker (read: slave) resorted to hiding in an airplane bathroom to be able to return home, after his abusive employer wouldn’t return his passport and give him permission to leave. Other employers, once their domestic workers muster up the courage to report the abuse, often counter-accuse the worker of committing crimes like theft of running away, and the police sometimes takes their side. We previously reported about a Sri Lankan maid who ended up in a Jordanian hospital after her employer beat her. When she complained, the employer accused the maid of theft and child abuse and the maid was arrested while still recovering from her injuries.

The invisibility of domestic workers in the homes of their sponsors to the outside world creates an increased risk of abuse, sexual harassment, food deprivation, and forced confinement. “In the worst cases, domestic workers may become trapped in situations of forced labor, trafficking, or slavery, or they die from murder, botched escape attempts, or suicide”, the report states. As we’ve documented, the high numbers of domestic workers taking their lives in Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is extremely worrisome and attests to the poor living and working conditions those housemaids have to endure.

The justice system in most Middle Eastern countries discriminates against migrant workers. As the report remarked, “Human Rights Watch has documented patterns in which the combination of poorly conducted investigations, lengthy trials, and weak enforcement of judgments combine to pressure victims of violence into accepting small financial settlements, a return ticket home, or nothing at all.” Last year we mentioned the case of an abused Sri Lankan maid who ran away from her Bahraini sponsor and approached the police, only to be returned to him. We also reported about the case of an Indian maid who was severely abused by her Bahraini sponsor who returned to India five months after the case was filed, and yet no charges was brought against her abusive sponsors.

Labor and Immigration Reforms

The report discusses the positive reforms in the labor and immigration laws made by regional governments. Unfortunately, other than in Jordan, regional governments do not include domestic workers under the protection of its labor laws. Other regional governments, like the UAE and Lebanon, introduced the standard employment contract, which regulates the domestic worker’s wages, but “falls short of providing the comprehensive protections provided under national labor laws”, the report noted. The contracts, which are also in use of private recruitment agencies in Saudi Arabia, do not give housemaids a weekly day off, it does not limit their working hours, and permits employers to forcibly keep their maids indoors. The reformed laws in Jordan still allows employers to hold their domestic worker’s passport and prohibit them from leaving the house, even on rest days. Changes in the sponsorship system in Kuwait and Bahrain excluded domestic workers.

Exposure to Racism and Sexism

The report notes that “Government officials, employers, and recruitment agents often make arguments against reform that reveal deep racial and gender stereotypes about migrant women and men, and the insecurities of wealthy elites that may feel physically and culturally threatened by large migrant populations but are also deeply dependent on them.” As we’ve shown, media reports in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE portray domestic workers as abusive sneaky witches, lazy liars and criminals. In addition to this “A second set of tensions around immigration reform center on sexual stereotypes and fears. Employers commonly describe their fear of migrant men or express stereotypes of migrant women as either sexually loose or as innocent and naïve in order to justify their practices of confining migrant domestic workers to the home and prohibiting them from taking a day off”, the report states.

The Human Rights Watch report paints a bleak picture about the rights of migrant domestic workers in the region. Despite the reforms, there is still a long way to go before domestic workers can arrive to the Middle East without fear of being abused, exploited, discriminated against and ignored by authorities.

This originally appeared on Migrant-Rights.org

Adel Alhimi

One of the last (two) countries where divorce is illegal and where the ruling Catholic elite maintains a staunch anti-reproductive rights stance, the island nation of the Philippines boasts a staggering population of 90 million people and (exponentially) counting. To better appreciate this figure, consider that the Philippines has nearly one third of the US population living in an area slightly bigger than Arizona.

According to the latest statistics compiled by the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (part of the Philippine Dept. of Labor and Employment), the agency responsible for facilitating the government’s aggressive export labor policy, ten percent of the Philippine population works abroad.

A fresh batch of 1.3 million citizens leave every year for employment overseas and a daily average of 3,377 workers pass through the country’s international airports to work abroad. Of the Filipino migrant workers who left in 2008, 51.1% were headed for the Middle East and there are 2.3 million Filipino migrant workers in the region (over 1 million in Saudi Arabia alone).

As the world’s largest exporter of women- 70% of migrant workers from the Philippines are women- the Philippines holds considerable bragging rights to the fact that women comprise the majority of the world’s migrant workers (this according to an alphabet soup of UN agencies, grassroots organizations and state labor departments).

To be sure, male and female migrant workers are often subject to similar abuse and exploitation as economically displaced persons whose labor is considered disposable and replenishable; however, unlike their male counterparts, female migrant workers experience an entirely unique set of issues and are most vulnerable to abuses as a sex-linked class. Female migrants workers are more likely to find themselves isolated and ensconced within their employers’ homes because they make up the majority of household service workers in the Middle East – official figures indicate that 79% of household service workers and 85% of non-professional nurse caretakers deployed to the Middle East in 2008 from the Philippines were women – and housework is considered unalterably private.

When female domestic workers ready themselves for the daily treadmill of barbarously petty housework activities (there is no clear delineation of tasks), they live with the knowledge that rape and murder are occupational hazards. Indeed, female returnees recount stories of wearing three or four pairs of underwear at night and barricading themselves in their quarters with chairs jammed beneath their doorknobs.

Rape is not sex in the sense that a woman is attractive and a man can’t resist her. Elderly women and babies are raped. It’s about being a convenient victim and dominance. The domestic worker is the highest manifestation of “convenience”.

As activist Angela Davis wrote in describing the collective rape of Black women by their white American slavemasters: “Having already established their economic dominance over their female subordinates, employers may attempt to assert this authority in sexual terms”, especially in environments where employers are immune to prosecution and their authority unchallenged. There are no accurate figures on the rape of migrant workers but it is very common.

This culture of impunity importunes abusive employers to continue to mistreatment their domestic workers: some women are flogged, cut, shaved bald, and even beaten to death as punishment. Cases of abuse filed to the OWWA (Overseas Workers Welfare Association) rank in the hundreds of thousands each year yet the organization has been remiss in its handling of migrant workers’ concerns, refusing to subsidize the shipment of migrants’ murdered bodies home, ricocheting rape victims between one indifferent government agency to another, and acting complicit in the deliberate dissolution of the family as women are forced to raise other children and service other needs at the expense of their own (Awfully reminiscent of the state-implemented separation of Black women and their families in apartheid South Africa, no?).

The desperate situation is reflected in the high death toll and high rate of suicide among female migrant workers. In 2008 a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch reported, “Domestic workers are dying in Lebanon at a rate of more than one per week. All those involved – from the Lebanese authorities, to the workers’ embassies, to the employment agencies, to the employers – need to ask themselves what is driving these women to kill themselves or risk their lives trying to escape from high buildings.”

Despite all good intentions, organizations advocating migrant rights often share a common thread with the OWWA in that they, consciously or subconsciously, ask women to good-naturedly take the backseat to and “not inject gender into” a purportedly genderless overarching agenda. However, the lived reality, as discussed, is not gender neutral. Women’s rights are not the parenthetical, Other issue to be handled by a special caucus, but are an integral part of human rights.

To break women’s invisibility, we have to first realize that women are not being listened to or seen (Note: we are confronted only by photos of male migrant workers on the homepage of this website). We have to take some real, not rhetorical, actions in advocating the fact that the overwhelming majority (both statistically and anecdotally) of the most egregious abuses are perpetrated against female migrant workers. Let us take power out of its hiding place while bringing women’s voices and leadership to the forefront of the struggle against oppression.

One would be hard-pressed to find a Filipino who does not know of or (surprisingly often) in the personal, at least one Filipina co-worker, neighbor, relative, friend or partner who has been raped while working in the Middle East. I can count three whom I know personally: a family friend (impregnated by her rapist-employer while working as a domestic in Riyadh), a former colleague and telecommunications engineer (gang raped while working for a Nokia-Siemens subsidiary in Saudi Arabia) and Grace Vasquez.

This is Grace’s story, told in her own words.

“Sometime in April 2005, my father suffered a second stroke and was unable to work since then. I wanted to be able to work in Oman in order to care and provide for my parents as I did not want them to return to the Philippines. This prompted me to seek for any job placement for Oman. Sometime in May 2005, I read Jinhel International Recruitment Agency’s (hereinafter, “Jinhel”) Manila Bulletin advertisement for job placements in countries in the Middle East. I immediately placed a call in the telephone number contained in the ad.

After one week, I went to Jinhel’s office and paid P3,000.00 for my medical exam. I was assured of a job placement in Qatar so I decided to resign from my work as Guidance Counselor in Systems Plus Computer College in Caloocan City. I went L-R Medical & X-ray Clinic. I paid P2,730.00. Then Jinhel called in March 2006. I was told to prepare as I was sure to be sent for work in Qatar. I paid Jinhel Five Thousand Pesos (P5,000.00) to Haja Fatima as payment, she said, for her services.

Jinhel and I agreed on the following terms of my employment in Qatar: monthly salary of QD700; work is Executive Secretary; the first two months’ salary will go to Jinhel as it’s commission.

At the airport, inside the immigration area, we were asked to pay P1,500.00 each, unreceipted. We were previously advised by Nelia to prepare the said amount. One of the Immigration Staff said “arbor ko na silang tatlo” (Hand those three over to me) because we didn’t have proper documents.

I arrived in Qatar on June 8, 2006. At the airport, I was met by Faruq, a Pakistani National who introduced himself to be from Al Waleed Agency – Jinhel’s Qatari counterpart agency. Faruq asked me to sign a contract with the following terms: monthly salary of QR600; work is to take care of a five-year-old child all day long with no day-off. I can’t do anything just to accept the contract.

Mr. Faruq brought me to my employer, Dr. Abdul Aziz Al Jumiah (hereinafter, “Dr. Abdul Aziz”). I came to know that Dr. Abdul Aziz is a Saudi National and a surgeon at the Al-Ramelah Hamad Hospital. His wife, Dina, was then pregnant and they had a five-year-old son.

I worked from 5:00 in the morning until about 1:00 or 2:00 the next morning as I was not allowed to sleep while my employers’ child was up. And since the child was asleep most of the time during the day, he usually went to bed past midnight.

Sometime in June (after about 2 week-stay in Qatar), I called the Philippine Embassy and I was able to talk to one Mr. Jack. I told him about my situation but, in return, he coldly told me: ”Hindi pa naman grabe ang nangyayari sa yo. Tapusin mo na yang 2 years mo.” (What’s happening to you isn’t even that bad. Just finish your two years.) He also gave me Overseas Workers Welfare Administration’s (OWWA) telephone number.

In the last week of June, I called OWWA and talked to one Mr. Sam to whom I repeated my story. He told me: “Tumakas ka na kung ayaw mo na. Lumabas ka at sumakay sa taxi.” *Escape if you’ve had enough. Walk out and get in a taxi.)

Madam Dina brought me with her to her hometown Syria. Where I cleaned all the house of her parents and brother’s house. I slept past 3 am and woke up at 6 am also.

We came back to Qatar in September.

On 14 September 2006, I was at the kitchen while Madam Dina was upstairs taking a bath, when Dr. Abdul Aziz arrived from the office. He suddenly embraced me and touched my breasts. I pushed him and told him that I would report to his wife. He just gave me a devil’s grin. When Madam Dina came down, I told her about what her husband did to me. But Madam Dina slapped me and blamed me for what had happened. And she shaved my head.

On the same day of September 14, 2006, Dr. Abdul Aziz asked for the key in my room. He ordered me not to lock my room from then on. I became so scared that I started to use the table in my room to block the door. I also kept a knife in my room.

On the third week of September, I again called OWWA. I told them about the harassment but I was given the same advice – to run away! I again requested that I be fetched or rescued but I was given the same answer – that OWWA does not rescue workers.

At around midnight on November 2, 2006, Madam Dina gave birth. He was brought to the hospital by Dr. Abdul Aziz. At about past 4:00 in the morning of November 3, 2006, I heard Dr. Abdul Aziz’s car arrive. I was then taking a shower. I got out of the bathroom. I just finished putting on my uniform when Dr. Abdul Aziz banged the door in my room. I was so shocked. Then Dr. Abdul Aziz immediately twisted my hands, laid me on the bed and tied my two hands on the bed using some cloth. He forcibly tore my clothes then raped me.

I pleaded and begged him not to do it. It hurt. After he raped me, he untied me. Then I saw that I was bleeding. I was so weak and almost went blank. I thought of the knife but I could not think or move. After what he did, I even saw him pray the Muslim prayer. Then I heard his car leave. I checked if he left any door unlocked. All doors/gates were locked. I was still bleeding.

At about 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning, I saw the window in my comfort room. I jumped out of that window. Luckily, Lorna (a fellow domestic worker) was then working in our neighbor’s garden. She told me to look for chairs I can step on. As I was jumping to our neighbor’s garden, Lorna saw that I was bleeding. Lorna let me out of her employer’s yard through their gate. But there were guards and so Lorna hid me behind a tree. We had to wait until the next prayer time at 11:00 in the morning. When she saw the guards entered their prayer house, Lorna advised me to run.

I hailed the taxi. I saw that it had passengers but I later learned that the taxi driver, a Filipino, saw me bleeding and so he stopped the taxi. From the taxi, the driver placed call to the Philippine Embassy.

When we arrived at the embassy, there was a party which I later learned was a party for Connie Sison and TJ Manotoc for their Kwentong Disyerto. There were media people at the embassy. The driver called Mr. Sam to inform him that we were already outside the embassy. Mr. Sam got out and even saw the blood on my body. He did not invite us in. He just told the driver to proceed and take me to OWWA. The driver even repeated that I was bleeding but Mr. Sam insisted that I be taken to OWWA.

When we got to OWWA, there was an ongoing ballroom dancing. We were asked who we were looking for. The taxi driver was making a call to Mr. Sam in order to ask who we would look for but he was not yet responding. We waited for two hours.

After two hours (or about 9:00 at night of November 3, 2006), one Sir Levi arrived at the OWWA from the embassy. He led me to a quarter that they call “shelter” inside the OWWA. I saw many (about 30) Filipino women inside the quarter .

On the night of November 3, Connie Sison’s group also proceeded to OWWA from the embassy. Sir Levi told the leader to hide those who needed to be hid including myself because I did not look good and I was hysterical. Out of the 30 plus women, only 15 were presented to Connie Sison’s group. I later learned that they were introduced as Filipinos studying computer inside the OWWA. I stayed in OWWA the whole day of November 4, 2006. We were fed “lugaw” (water mixed with rice). No one counseled me. I was not checked up or brought to the hospital.

On the night of November 4, 2006, Ma’am Ferida without first talking to me or asking me, called my employer. At about 8:00 in the morning the following day, my employer came. He was first attended to by Sir Levi. He was asked if I was his employee. They were later joined by Ma’am Ferida. They then invited me to sit down with them inside Ma’am Ferida and Sir Levi’s office. The door of the office was left open. Ma’am Flerida talked to me and told me “wag ka na magreklamo anyway may asawa ka naman na, wala naman nawala sayo” )Don’t make a complaint [because] you already have a husband, you have nothing to lose.)

I was angry at the sight of my employer-rapist. But I could not do anything because Ma’am Ferida and Sir Levi facilitated the negotiation. I was asked not to file charges against my employer. In return, my employer would give me my five months salary, a plane ticket to the Philippines as well as return my personal belongings that I left at their house when I escaped. I was made to write and sign a waiver which I worded as follows: “I will not file charges against my employer, the rape case, although it happened.”

In the morning of November 6, Sir Levi called me and gave me a plane ticket. I asked him about my personal belongings and the agreed five months salary that my employer would return. He said my employer only gave the ticket. I insisted, at the very least, on my things, but he said “Mamili ka. Uuwi ka or made-deport ka? Basta’s kailangan ko ng sagot mo hanggang 3:00 dahil alis tayo ng 3:30.” (Buy (new) things. Will you go home or will you have to be deported? Either way, I need an answer by 3:00 otherwise we’re leaving at 3:30.) I cried and demanded for my things but he said ”Wala akong magagawa.” (There’s nothing I can do.) I had no choice but to agree.

Sir Levi and I left OWWA for the airport at 3:30 in the afternoon. But before leaving, I got my mobile phone that was earlier confiscated by Ma’am Ferida. I was penniless. I was not even given any money for snacks or any emergency.

At about 6:00 p.m., I boarded the plane for the Philippines. I arrived in the Philippines in November 7, 2006 where I was brought o the hospital by my family. Not one from OWWA of the Department of Foreign Affairs assisted me in the Philippines.

When I arrived at the airport in Manila only my husband was there to receive me. My relatives took me to the hospital where I live in Batangas.* There was local press at the hospital that picked up what had happened to me.

I had to go to therapy for almost a year because I was in shock.

I’ve been waiting for the response of the government but until now there’s been absolutely no help.

It’s still not over.”

Grace with her daughter a year after returning to the Philippines.

On the right: Grace with her father before going to Qatar.

Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2010 was released this month, which strongly condemns the Gulf states for failing to protect the rights of Migrant Workers. The HRW report raises the issues of passport confiscation, abuses of domestic workers and bans on trade unions as key issues in the region. Bahrain and Kuwait have taken steps towards removing the kafala system, which ties the right of a migrant to remain in the country to the permission of his sponsor. However, a disturbing finding is that migrant domestic workers are excluded from the new legislation. This is particularly concerning to Migrant-Rights.org given the spate of suicides and attempted suicides by distressed maids working in the region in recent months (see here and here).

This month, the worrisome trend of suicides by domestic workers in Lebanon continues, with four documented cases of suicide in four weeks (see first, second, and third and fourth). In the second week of January, three migrant workers ended their life in Bahrain.

Highlights

The following section will include stories that we feel are especially important or haven’t received enough public attention:

Qatar a ‘Death Trap’ for Nepali Migrants
Around 217 Nepali migrant workers lost their lives in Qatar in 2009, according to Nepali Ambassador Surya Nath Mishra. This is a rise from the 175 documented cases of death of Nepali nationals in Qatar in 2008. The rapidly-developing Gulf state has long been a favored destination for Nepali migrant workers, many of whom are employed on construction sites.

Bangladeshi Workers Go Hungry in Libya
A group of 46 Bangladeshi workers in Libya who have been living without work, salaries and facilities for months. The workers have been living out in “a shabby abandoned camp with no sanitation and facilities”, according to one of the workers. On days when they can’t find work, they go hungry and sometimes boil leaves for food.

Raped Filipino Worker Faces Lashing after Miscarriage in Saudi Prison
A Filipino woman who worked as a janitor in Saudi Arabia was raped in August of last year by a Bangladeshi co-worker and became pregnant as a result. Her pregnancy was discovered in September during a medical checkup and she was thrown to jail because the police did not accept her version that she was raped, and instead ruled that she had an “illicit affair”. Last month the woman suffered a miscarriage in prison and she is now facing lashings before being deported back to the Philippines.

This was the Migrant-Rights.org newsletter for the month of January. If you wish to subscribe, you can enter your e-mail address into the form at the bottom of the Migrant-Rights.org homepage.

The situation has gotten so bad that many stores either ran out of chicken or had to turn people away without honoring the coupon.

Why America’s most popular female talk show host would offer such a deal is beyond the comprehension of most sane people, including those who are against the killing of millions of innocent fowl to satisfy the hunger of these people. The following piece, taken from a website, called www.Kentuckyfriedcruelty.com sums it up well: KFC suppliers cram birds into huge waste-filled factories, breed and drug them to grow so large that they can’t even walk, and often break their wings and legs.

At slaughter, the birds’ throats are slit and they are dropped into tanks of scalding-hot water — often while they are still conscious. It would be illegal for KFC to abuse dogs, cats, pigs, or cows in these ways.

In addition, it’s now becoming evident that many of these factory farms feed their chickens arsenic, mixed in with chicken feed, as both a growth stimulant as well as to kill parasites.

Fast food chicken establishments are now open in many parts of the Middle East, including: Bahrain. Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE. The arsenic issue is not limited solely the USA, as it has been revealed that small quantities of arsenic were fed as a growth stimulant to chickens in Israel from 2003 to 2006.

Although officially discontinued in 2006, the damage done by three years of eating chickens laced with arsenic has most likely left arsenic residues in many people, which one day could cause cancers and other health problems.

Israel has a very large and well developed poultry industry, with more than 700 poultry farms producing more then 400,000 tons of chicken meat a year.

Chicken is one of the country’s main sources of animal protein; and Israelis are the second largest world chicken consumers, averaging 36 kg per person per year. Much Israeli poultry is also raised on large farms, which also supplies eggs to large supermarket chains.

Due to Jewish Kashrut dietary laws, chickens have to be ritually slaughtered, which many say is much more humane than the American example noted above. That still doesn’t eliminate the problem of feeding hormones and other growth supplements to chickens that between 2003 and 2006 included arsenic as well.

Arsenic was also fed to pigs being raised in Israel, also as a growth stimulant. Free-range chicken, under the Teva Off brand are now available in Israel it’s doubtful but KFC franchises will use them, due to their smaller size and higher costs.

One reader of her site wrote: “I found it interesting that Oprah would promote KFC after doing a show about the horrors of factory farming.”

::free KFC at Oprah Winfrey

This post was first written by freelance journalist and blogger Maurice Picow at the world’s only Middle East focused environment news site and blog Green Prophet - www.greenprophet.com.

Making their wealth from the non-renewable energy resource natural gas, Qataris learned a little more about the carbon market earlier this month. According to the Gulf Times, UK-based carbon-related firms looking to do business in Qatar were part of the Carbon Market Business Opportunities seminar, held under the auspices of Minister of Environment HE Abdullah Mubarak al-Midhadi and the British Ambassador to Qatar John Hawkins.

Taking place at the Movenpick Towers & Suites participants looked to promote the carbon market and build UK-Qatar partnerships.

A spokesman for the organisers told the Gulf Times: “Developing a low-carbon, high-growth economy is a key challenge for countries around the world today. The carbon market has a vital role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and last year doubled in size compared with 2007 to be worth over $120 billion.

(Pictured above is H.E. Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, Qatar’s Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Energy & Industry and Chairman of Qatar Petroleum. This guy is in charge of the world’s third largest supply of natural gas.)

“With the growth of the carbon market has come the growth of companies with particular expertise in climate-change projects and emissions trading. The UK government has encouraged private sector companies to participate in the market and the City of London has taken the lead in building the carbon investment and advisory services infrastructure necessary to finance greenhouse gas reduction projects.”

The UK side led by the UK Climate Change Projects Office, and its part of the seminar focused on the funding and development of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), projects and other carbon trading and climate change services that can be adopted in Qatar.

Besides practical advice on how to prepare for the CDM, and how to finance and develop projects, future business opportunities in the broader carbon market were discussed.

Putting the cart before the horse, I think Qataris need to learn a little more about environmental awareness before they embark on carbon market schemes. But this meeting with UK reps anyway, is likely to only focus on the business sector.

::Gulf Times
Image credit: moaksey

More on Qatar’s environment:
Qatar Sets Some Environmental Goals
Qatar’s Desert Seawater Greenhouses

::Green Prophet

A couple of weeks ago I was in New Orleans with my parents at the annual craziness known as Fat Tuesday during Mardi Gras. Besides the excess of everything I saw there including waste, and the nasty black eye I sustained from a large set of beads being thrown on my head off a Bourbon Street balcony (my friend warned that the beads always come with strings attached), I saw sections of the city that have not yet been rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina.

Like New Orleans which is built below sea level, the Dutch have been fighting nature for centuries, as have the Venetians. According to a new study by an Indian scientist, the mega-urban development projects (like the one pictured above) being established in the Middle East (United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Bahrain) are just setting people up to be victims of natural disasters. Things will look even worse once the effects of global warming become more pronounced, warn experts.

Apparently no environmental assessment of these developed regions was done before towns and cities were constructed in these unusual settings.

Artificial islands and offshore luxury townships coming up in the Persian Gulf are potentially vulnerable to natural hazards like earthquakes and tsunamis, cautions Arun Kumar, a professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Although they are futuristic and novel, “there are serious issues of long-term sustainability of these townships,” he says in The Hindu.

“Natural hazards have struck this region in the past and have the potential to strike again any time in the future,” Kumar warns in a report published in the latest issue of Current Science.

(Burj in Dubai)

According to the report, the massive development projects in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Bahrain are susceptible to both geological and atmospheric hazards.

For example, the city of Dubai is developing five new giant offshore island communities: The Palm Jebel Ali, The Palm Jumeirah, The Palm Deira, The World, and The Universe.

The Pearl Qatar is another colossal project being developed by Qatar on reclaimed land. Bahrain is also developing similar urban projects.

Natural hazards risk
According to the scientists, tropical cyclones and the resulting oceanic surges are the main possible atmospheric hazards that can strike this region at any time in the future.

His report warns about the likelihood and possible impact of each of these unsafe events. With global warming in mind, there is also the issue of the long-term supply of potable water to such communities.

“The danger of earthquakes would be higher in reclaimed islands and their tall buildings because reclaimed land is potentially more susceptible to liquefaction and slope failure,” the report warns. Liquefaction is a phenomenon where soils suddenly go from a solid state to a liquefied state that can happen when the ground is shaken during an earthquake.

Other natural disasters that could strike the Gulf:

• Tropical cyclones are becoming more frequent due to the effects of global warming.
• Inundation and erosion due to a rise in sea-level and an increase in storm surge events.
• Movement of surface and submarine currents in the Gulf poses a severe threat of erosion to these man-made islands.
• Evironmental pollution and algal blooms due to eutrophication within the closed water bodies due to lack of circulation, absence of currents and surface waves, and heavy input of organic waste are expected to be serious issues.

“I am not sure if environmental impact assessment was done for these reclaimed islands,” Kumar said. “May be they did such studies but I did not find any information in the public domain.”

:: The Hindu

This post first appeared in the Middle East environment news website Green Prophet. For more stories on the impact of climate change and the environment covering Israel and the Arab world, see www.greenprophet.com.

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It took the Arab world more than 20 days to suddenly wake up and hold a meeting about the situation in Gaza. Back when the Gaza crisis started, a GCC meeting was held with no regard to the situation’s seriousness. They finished their commercial merge ups, shared the wealth, and then headed back to their getaways.

20 days later, they realized that the situation is too serious to ignore any much longer, and yet they conflict at when and where should the summit be held.

Is it really that hard to decide an URGENT meeting?

Some say that they’re hand tied in not doing anything about it. Then, it would be natural to pursue achieving anything in a Financial summit, favoring its attendance to discuss Gaza, claiming that it has been thought about and planned for for a year now.

Is it really Priorities or Politics?

Come to think of it.. Was Gaza really a SUDDEN turn of events?
How many Arab Summits were held discussing the Palestinian Issue?
How many conclusions and decision were made?

.. How many actually saw this coming and “zipped” it?

Looking at the recent Arab Summit, it’s now visibly seen on Television what drives us weaker and weaker. We can’t even agree on our stand towards what Hamas’s actions represent, achieve or pays on the expense of the people they seek to protect.. We can’t even get the to next point without telling everyone, This is MY view, screw YOUR view.

However, what personally ticked me off, is this call for sympathy with Hamas, in the Summit and in society.

On what basis should i sympathize with Hamas? On their lack of any strategic thinking? On their lack of military power? On their “tactical” choice of threatening with Suicide bombers? On their methods of Hiding from the enemy, deeper into heavily populated areas?

Moreover, If you take a look at the social stand point of the people, it’s either you SUPPORT Hamas and pray for their success, or don’t do anything about it.. I saw allot of the latter, but i also faced a fair share from those who supported Hamas.. What about supporting the victims? choosing their side isn’t an option anymore?

1000+ people died until now.. What are Hamas goal’s exactly? Signing a truce, cutting back your losses, especially when you’re weak, is a strategic move. Logic, Rationality and even Islam agrees with that.. This, easily, makes anyone doubt their understanding of Islam, which is supposedly the doctrine they work by. I doubt it, since their actions are in complete conflict with what Islam tells us in such times of war.

Surrendering is a strategic advantage, and can reduce the blood shed until people are intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically strong. Strong enough to be able to reply, and wise enough to know how to deal with such a country that is a gathering of blood thirsty warmongers.

We’re mentally, spiritually and intellectually weak. Scattered on every view. If we still conflict in our understanding of Islam, and we fail to stand together as a Muslim community, do you really think we’d do any better in uniting under the Arab flag?

Moreover, Raw power, which is Hamas in this case, is futile. Unguided and unplanned, it can cause more damage than the good.

Speculating on a fact here.. I wonder, would things have taken a different path if Sheikh Ahmed Yaseen was still alive?

I mean, he didn’t stray deep into turning a Resistance group into a political authority. Which doesn’t seem the case with what seems to be the hidden agenda of Hamas’s current leadership.

On the other hand, Israel showed before, and it’s showing again, that rules don’t apply if you’re “their” alley.. Doesn’t matter to which side, because the world has turned into two major groups, An Alley and an Enemy.. As a Result, Israel shows another new bloody display of its allegiance as the Terror State of the free world.

Now comes the confusing part where society parts..

What are WE doing to help? We can’t even protest, which is much more logical than boycotting a locally used, operated and supplied Chillies. Thinking that those Fajitas are bullet money to kill us..

The new ideology that seems to be a trend: donate your money, donate your blood, sing a song, make a video clip, and write a poem, and your obligations end there. Any or All of the above, according to how much spare time you have. As a result, you think you’re relieved and you paid your obligations, and now You can freely celebrate the winning of your national team over a football championship.

This “Microwave” instant solution hype isn’t our key of salvation from the guilt that rides over us every time we watch Television, nor is it a cure to the disease that eats us from within.. an Issue like Gaza needs years of building and preparation and in-depth efforts to help, not just give our Money surplus and then go back to our daily lives, turning a blind eye to the mess we’re in.. Much studies and much approaches and much growth in all fields should be accomplished, if we are to achieve anything civilized towards how we see and want to solve this issue.. Not to blind our selves from other disasters that still happen across the world, and the Muslim world in specific.. We fix ourselves to face those problems, not face those problems while we’re weak against our ill understanding of things, or our wants and needs.

I don’t mean to interrupt those many young men that I saw in the streets, wearing Santa clause hats in Tahlia Street in Jeddah, saying their greetings joking about Christmas.. Those guys seem to be in an identity spiral that needs therapy.. But I mean to wake you up to the fact that Gaza’s blood is dripping from everyone’s hands.

I won’t say that I blame Israel.. I won’t say that I blame Hamas.. I won’t say that i blame the world, the Arab leaders in specific.. They’re all to blame.. We’re also included, with how we react to such an issue, what we do and what we spread around.

And Guess what, the mainstreamed hype of Boycotting Israeli, or Pro-Israel American, products proves that we know nothing about commerce, about the world, and about how this war is actually funded.. It proves no points what so ever, especially that most of these boycotts are initiated under false pretenses, masked by Islam.. Falling under the idea that if you boycott the products listed in a forwarded email, given verbal, non-factual, guarantees that these products are Zionist, would reduce the amount of funding the “war on terror” receives. But that’s a different topic that may take us off course now.

Israel claims to be in “defense”, While Hamas claims to score high casualties on the Israeli side.. Sadly, the number of innocent Palestinian Women and Children nearly flood the screens..

..When’s the wake-up call, again?

Yours,
Lou