Since Qatar was awarded the organization of the FIFA World Cup in 2022 in 2010, the emirate authorities have repeatedly announced “The abolition of the kafala”. In response to criticism from the media and human rights defenders, stigmatizing this system of supervision in force in all the Gulf monarchies, which chains the foreign worker to his employer and allows all abuses, the micromonarchy promoted between 2014 and 2017 a series of reforms supposed to bring it down.
But as James Lynch, an Amnesty International alumnus, writes on Migrant-rights.org, a site devoted to the protection of immigrants in the Gulf, “All that these measures have brought is to remove the word kafala from legal texts. The system has remained in place ”.
This trompe-l’œil process, which fools no one except those who wanted to be, seems to be over. On August 30, through a revision of its labor code, Qatar authorized the 2.5 million foreign workers on its territory – out of a total population of 2.8 million inhabitants – to change jobs without having to obtain the prior consent of their employer, embodied in a document known to everyone in the emirate, the famous “NOC” (Non-Objection Certificate).
” The beginning of a new era “
This fundamental reform crowns the process of dismantling the legal bases of the kafala, launched three years ago by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Qatar had authorized this specialized UN agency to open an office in Doha in 2017, in exchange for its refusal to launch a commission of inquiry into forced labor in the emirate.
Technical cooperation between the organization’s experts and the Qatari labor ministry had already led in 2018 to a law exempting workers who toil in World Cup stadiums and other infrastructure projects from the need to obtain a exit visa before leaving the country. The benefit of this measure was extended in January 2020 to all of the country’s foreign workforce, in particular domestic employees.
With these two laws, allowing the little hands of the Qatari miracle to change jobs and travel almost as they please, the two main pillars of the kafala find themselves on the ground. In the eyes of the ILO, whose mission in Qatar is supposed to end next year – unless its contract is extended -, “The guardianship system has effectively been dismantled, which marks the start of a new era for the Qatari labor market”.
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