Vietnam’s labour brokerage state enables worker abuse in Saudi Arabia

Ten years have handed because the signing of the Vietnam–Saudi Arabia Bilateral Labour Settlement (BLA) in 2014, which ruled the sending of girls from Vietnam to do home work below the Kafala system, a visa sponsorship system frequent in Saudi Arabia and different Gulf nations—one that offers the employees’ kafeel (head of family and employer) full management over the lives of those feminine home employees. In 2019, each governments quietly renewed this 5-year bilateral settlement with none public announcement. The settlement is up for renewal in 2024.

The secrecy across the 2019 renewal was prompted by dangerous publicity, each native and international, relationship again to the launch of the BLA in 2014. Solely a yr after the 2014 settlement, Vietnamese labour newspapers had already reported violations of its phrases on the a part of Vietnamese recruitment firms and governmental companies.

These newspapers delineated grievances and petitions that uncovered the hardships and abuses endured by employees in Saudi Arabia. Between 2019 and 2022, a flurry of studies dropped at gentle violations of home girls employees’ rights in Saudi Arabia, which got here from varied sources: Vietnamese labour newspapers, a UN particular report on human trafficking in Vietnam, and unbiased worldwide students.

As contract violations continued by way of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many employees’ spouses and members of the family went to the native newspapers to demand the return of their family members who had already completed their two-year contracts in Saudi Arabia however had been caught in lockdowns with no approach to get residence. No employees’ pleas have been answered by the Vietnamese Embassy; and the Kafala international employee system left it to the kafeels to find out these girls employees’ fates. Nevertheless it was the loss of life of an underage girl in 2021, which culminated within the UN particular report on human trafficking in Vietnam, that shocked the world.

Social media movies reproduced by media shops confirmed H Xuân Siu, a member of the Jarai ethnic minority, pleading with the Labour Attaché stationed at Vietnam’s embassy in Riyadh for assist in escaping repeated bodily beatings to her head by the feminine employer which triggered unconsciousness a number of occasions—however to no avail. She reached out particularly to VINACO, the recruitment firm that despatched her there, in addition to to the 2 Vietnamese labour attachés on the Vietnamese Embassy in Riyadh, about her excruciating ache and the necessity for water, however nobody got here to her rescue. Different native newspapers picked up and uncovered these abuses.

The delicate freedom for the Vietnamese media to report on these abuses ended on the finish of 2021 after these exposures of labour violations in Saudi Arabia negatively affected Vietnam’s stature on the worldwide stage. Within the US Division of State’s 2022 Trafficking-In-Individuals (TIP) report Vietnam was downgraded to Tier 3, the bottom doable rating, within the report’s evaluation of its compliance with primary measures to fight human trafficking. This downgrade has had unfavourable monetary implications for the Vietnamese state and led to the sudden discharge of the 2 Division of Labour officers on the Vietnamese Embassy in Riyadh. Since 2021, the Vietnamese authorities has positioned an unofficial gag order on the media protection of labour violations in Saudi Arabia, to guard the Vietnamese state’s picture. It’s doable that the dearth of exposé reportage to the remainder of the world introduced Vietnam again as much as Tier 2 Watch Record within the 2023 TIP report.

The aim of this text is to boost consciousness and to name for motion to repair the gaping gap of this BLA earlier than it’s renewed in 2024 for an additional 5 years. What’s nonetheless lacking, after ten years of the settlement, is the institution of a Customary Employment Contract (SEC) for Vietnamese employees that was required to be created and signed on the onset of this 2014 BLA by the 4 key stakeholders—the Vietnamese employee and the Vietnamese recruitment firm, and the Saudi kafeel and the Saudi recruitment firm).

The objective ought to be to carry these stakeholders accountable to implement and adjust to the rights and duties of employees and employers. Whereas this requirement was clearly stipulated in Merchandise #8 of the 2014 BLA, it has by no means been applied. In the meantime, the important thing state companies—the Division of Abroad Labour (DoLAB) and Vietnam Affiliation of Manpower Provide (VAMAS)—proceed to be silent after quite a few inquiries, outreach, and public outrage.

The failure of building the required SEC, ten years after the signing of the 2014 BLA, is straight linked to sustaining structural violence in an effort to profit the 2 governments and their recruitment firms, on the expense of the Vietnamese home employees. With none oversight, the long-overdue SEC is much more pressing, now that the BLA is about to be renewed once more.

Structural violence defined

To know the structural violence Vietnamese migrant employees are subjected to, we have to perceive the interconnection of the BLA with the Kafala system, and the shared pursuits of state officers and recruitment firms in each nations that maintain an exploitative transnational labour system.

Kafala visa sponsorship system is prevalent all through the six nations within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). On this system, the heads of family (cum employers) management international employees’ entry visas, residence permits in addition to exit permits. Beneath the Saudi Arabian Kafala system, the Saudi authorities transferred the duty of monitoring international home employees to the Saudi Home Recruitment Workplace, which in flip transfers energy to the Saudi kafeel who’ve full authority to handle and profit from the labour of their international home employees. Furthermore, the home employees are tied to the unique sponsors who can deport them if they aren’t happy with the employees’ service. My analysis has discovered that these kafeel transferred the Vietnamese employees to many households that weren’t on the unique contracts.

In September 2014, the 2 deputy labour ministers in Vietnam and Saudi Arabia signed this 5-year BLA to ship Vietnamese girls to work as home employees within the houses of the Saudi households, with an automated renewal clause. Within the wake of the renewal in 2019 for an additional 5 years, VAMAS selected 17 December 17 2020 to kind the Division on the Center East Home Assist Market and appointed its leaders. (The literal translation of VAMAS in Vietnamese is the Affiliation to Export Labor from Vietnam (Hiệp Hội Xuất Khẩu Lao Động Việt Nam).

However unbeknownst to most people, the highest 5 leaders of this division are administrators and presidents of recruitment firms that have been tainted with corruption and dangerous reputations after  leaving employees stranded and exploited in Saudi Arabia throughout the COVID-19 disaster. Specifically, VINACO, the recruitment firm that despatched the underage Jrai ethnic minority feminine employee who died in Saudi Arabia (mentioned above), continues to be in energy. My analysis has discovered that Thuận An DMC (previously often called Vĩnh Cát) continues to function even with many labour violations. These firms, represented by VAMAS’ Code of Conduct and vetted by the ILO workplace in Vietnam, proceed to take pleasure in their powers with none penalty or oversight of their violations. VINACO’s actions, particularly, have been the alternative of the Code of Conduct to which it subscribes.

4 years have handed, and these identical leaders proceed to steer this division. It’s lengthy overdue to determine oversight to make them accountable for his or her actions.

On the high stage, the Vietnamese state—appearing successfully as a labour brokerage state—works alongside the Saudi Kafala system below which migrant home employees are employed. Whereas in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Kafala system supersedes the BLA, reigning supreme by confiscating employees’ passports as quickly as they set foot in Saudi Arabia, controlling employees’ entry visas, residence permits and exit permits. A 2018 Human Rights Watch report discovered that just lately launched reforms to migrant labour circumstances in Saudi Arabia don’t apply to home employees, who continued to endure passport confiscations, bodily and sexual abuse, and are prohibited from becoming a member of commerce unions or hanging.

Structural violence is steady as a result of there isn’t any official oversight to watch the implementation of the BLA. The Saudi Recruitment Workplace works straight with the kafeel, who apply for all of the visas to sponsor and management every home employee. The Vietnamese Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MoLISA) grants licenses to recruitment firms that go to poor areas in Vietnam to recruit employees. The Division of Abroad Labour (DoLAB), housed within the Vietnamese Embassy in Riyadh, is meant to work intently with VAMAS to resolve Vietnamese employees’ grievances whereas working abroad. All of them have turned a blind eye to repeated complaints lodged by the Vietnamese employees there. This technique protects notoriously corrupt recruitment firms, which goal not solely girls in poor rural elements of Vietnam’s north-central provinces, but additionally ethnic minorities within the central highlands.

The ILO workplace in Hanoi has been offering technical help to MoLISA and DoLAB and dealing intently with VAMAS, however turning a blind eye to the dangerous “Code of Conduct” of many VAMAS member recruitment firms that failed to guard employees in Saudi Arabia.  Contained in the kafeel’s houses, most of those feminine employees endure, as unfree labour, from being transferred from one home to a different (which isn’t allowed below the BLA), leading to precarity, lack of pay, cycle of debt, and dispossession of their rights. (I’ve reached out to the ILO’s workplace in Hanoi however acquired no response. I’ve additionally communicated quite a few occasions with some ILO employees, particularly concerning the standing of this standardised employment contract kind, to no avail.)

New narratives from the Vietnamese state

What we see now because the 2024 renewal of the BLA is imminent, are the brand new narratives of the Vietnamese state, specializing in commerce and funding and export of high-skilled employees. Since 2022, the official narratives have been selling bilateral agreements between Vietnam and Saudi Arabia on commerce and funding. Specifically, Saudi Arabia has needed to import 10 million extra international short-term employees from many nations—together with Vietnam—particularly within the areas of producing industries, power, well being, and tourism.  The BLA has centered on two-way tourism, the export of Vietnamese halal meals merchandise to Saudi Arabia, and the usage of renewable power. Whereas Saudi Arabia has been exporting primarily chemical-related merchandise, similar to plastics and liquefied petroleum gasoline, Vietnam has primarily exported cell phones, agricultural merchandise similar to rice, cashew nuts, fruit and veggies.

Furthermore, directives coming from the prime minister and varied ministries (labour, commerce, and trade) have been specializing in coaching expert employees to go to work within the Center East (Saudi Arabia). Specifically, MoLISA has burdened the significance of “deciding on good employers, good contracts which can be appropriate to Vietnamese employees, and utilizing skilled ability units of the employees as a foundation for negotiations in an effort to increase the wage and different rights and advantages for employees.” The response of recruitment firms belonging to VAMAS pledges compliance with their leaders’ directives:

We acknowledge the Minister’s main advice and pledge to develop the Center East (labour) market in accordance with the essence of the directive of “not sending employees there in any respect prices” however as a substitute specializing in coaching employees and assessing and deciding on fastidiously [Saudi] counterparts, offering contract, supporting and managing employees throughout the time they work abroad, in an effort to guarantee their labour rights.

However how concerning the working and dwelling circumstances of the largely low-skilled employees, particularly the ladies who work as domestics behind closed doorways, unseen and unacknowledged, within the homes of their kafeel employers? As of October 2023, there have been nonetheless about 5,000 Vietnamese employees in Saudi Arabia doing masonry, building, mechanics, home work, chauffeuring; a couple of are engineers and professionals. However there isn’t any info in official information shops or authorities notices, studies, or another publicly out there databases concerning the working circumstances of those largely low-skilled short-term employees.

Conclusion

It’s ironic that over 5,000 export employees in Saudi Arabia should not accounted for on the listing of exports from Vietnam, proudly accompanying the Vietnamese prime minister’s announcement of commerce and funding talks with Saudi Arabia.

Vietnam can be taught from good practices within the case of the Philippines and Cambodia. These two nations signed their BLAs with Saudi Arabia in 2013 and 2016 respectively. However these two nations instantly protected their employees by creating and utilizing the Customary Employment Contract for his or her home employees in the identical yr that every nation signed the BLA with Saudi Arabia.

Utilizing the identical format, their Customary Employment Contract (SEC) has two columns in two languages: English and Arabic, clearly spelled out contact info of the Saudi employer (represented by the Saudi Recruitment Company), the home employee (represented by her/his recruitment company) and the positioning of employment. All of the rights and advantages of employees are said clearly on the SEC for correct implementation. And on the finish, 4 signatures are required to acknowledge all of the phrases said on this SEC: the Saudi employer, the Saudi recruitment company, the home employee and their recruitment company. This stage of transparency is essential to be sure that the recruitment companies are held accountable to supervise and implement the contract adequately. Furthermore, this SEC supplies the framework for employees to grieve and/or to complain when their rights should not applied and their contract is grossly violated.

From these SECs, the rights of Cambodian and Filipino home employees are protected and they’re even assured a one-month paid trip at their residence nations, if their 2-year contracts are completed efficiently and prolonged by mutual settlement between the employees and the employers.

Because it stands, structural violence—enabled by the Vietnamese labour brokerage state and the Kafala system’s failure to correctly monitor the BLA—denies social welfare and safety for Vietnamese girls home employees, promised within the BLA. As demonstrated by finest practices from its Southeast Asian neighbours in Cambodia and the Philippines, the Vietnamese and Saudi governments can do it proper by establishing and utilizing the long-overdue SEC to supply oversight and to guard the rights and advantages of Vietnamese home employees.

Nonetheless, whereas creating the SEC is usually a easy first step for the Vietnamese and Saudi governments to take, one ought to be cautious that SEC is probably not an efficient instrument to make sure transnational home labour rights. Findings from a 2023 examine primarily based on a survey of Filipino and Indonesian girls who have been beforehand employed as migrant home employees within the Arab Gulf states discovered that greater than half of the households subjected these employees to not less than one type of mistreatment, starting from extreme working hours, late cost of wage, denial of someday off per week, and even restricted entry to meals and medical care, in addition to bodily and emotional abuse.

An neutral third celebration, such because the unions or some civil society organisations, is required to supervise the implementation of the SEC to make sure that transnational home labour rights are upheld.