Schakowsky, Grijalva Lead Calls to End Human Trafficking in the Gulf Region

Full Text of Letter (PDF)

WASHINGTON - U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), member of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, and U.S. Representative Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07) led five of their colleagues in a letter to U.S. Secretary State Antony Blinken urging the United States to take action to address human trafficking by member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates).

"We call on you to take the appropriate diplomatic means to encourage GCC member states to combat human trafficking by systematically improving gender equality and migrant labor rights," wrote the lawmakers.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 defines severe human trafficking as not only sex trafficking but also the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

"The GCC member states employ the Kafala sponsorship system, which links migrant workers' visa status directly to their employment contracts," continued the lawmakers. "This system, widely criticized by many organizations as a contemporary form of slavery, has enabled widespread labor exploitation, from wage theft to delayed payments to forms of direct abuse."'

Migrant workers face the prospect of incarceration or expulsion if they attempt to leave their jobs without their employer's (or sponsor's) consent.

"We ask that the U.S. government emphasize that this pursuit cannot fully be realized until the Kafala system has undergone complete reform or is abolished in its entirety," concluded the lawmakers.

In addition to Reps. Schakowsky and Grijalva, cosigners of the letter include Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC-AL), Jim McGovern (MA-02), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Jamie Raskin (MD-08), and André Carson (IN-07).

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