Top UN official concerned over exploitation of Gulf migrant workers

United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has expressed concern that efforts to improve conditions for immigrant workers in the Gulf countries have stalled even as "exploitative control" over them by employers continues to be widely prevalent.

"In Gulf Cooperation Council countries, attempts to develop better governance regarding labor migration from Asia have stalled, and exploitative control over migrant workers by their employers remains the dominant model," Mr Al Hussein told the opening session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva Monday.

The six Gulf Cooperation Council countries rely on the labour of more than five million Indian workers. According to a Human Rights Watch document issued last year, "Migrant workers in the Gulf frequently experience hazardous working conditions, long hours, unpaid wages, and cramped and unsanitary housing." The situation is made more severe by employers seizing their passports and the sponsorship-based employment system that prevents them from switching jobs, it said.

A Jordanian diplomat, Mr Al Hussein, assumed the office of Human Rights Commissioner this month after Ms Navi Pillay completed her term. Calling her "one of the greatest senior officials the UN has ever had," he said, "That she could annoy many Governments - and she did - was clear; but she believed deeply and movingly in the centrality of victims, and of those who are discriminated against. They needed her vocal chords, her lungs and her pen, and she made everyone listen."

Ms Pillay, whose complete first name is Navaneetham, is a South African of Indian descent. She was first appointed High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2008 after having headed the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Mr Al Hussein called on Sri Lanka to cooperate with the council-mandated investigation into human rights abuses by all sides in the island nation. "I encourage the Sri Lankan authorities to cooperate with this process in the interests of justice and reconciliation," he said. "I am alarmed at threats currently being leveled against the human rights community in Sri Lanka, as well as prospective victims and witnesses."

Sri Lanka dismissed his request for cooperation with the probe, calling it a "challenge (to) the sovereignty and independence" of the nation. In a statement distributed at Monday's session, Ambassador Ravinatha P. Aryasinha said his country would, however, continue to work with Human Rights Council on other issues. His government, he added, is committed to continuing its own domestic process of reconciliation.

Mr Al Hussein also called for international action to stop the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant from trying to create a "house of blood" in the region.