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 underneath the Kafala system, a visa sponsorship system widespread in Saudi Arabia and different Gulf international locations—one that provides 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, courting 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 corporations and governmental businesses.
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 reviews delivered to gentle violations of home ladies employees’ rights in Saudi Arabia, which got here from varied sources: Vietnamese labour newspapers, a UN particular report on human trafficking in Vietnam, and impartial worldwide students.
As contract violations continued by means 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 option to get dwelling. No employees’ pleas have been answered by the Vietnamese Embassy; and the Kafala overseas employee system left it to the kafeels to find out these ladies employees’ fates. Nevertheless it was the dying 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 brought on 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 potential rating, within the report’s evaluation of its compliance with fundamental measures to fight human trafficking. This downgrade has had detrimental 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 potential that the dearth of exposé reportage to the remainder of the world introduced Vietnam again as much as Tier 2 Watch Checklist 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 one more 5 years. What’s nonetheless lacking, after ten years of the settlement, is the institution of a Normal 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 purpose needs 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 businesses—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 creating the required SEC, ten years after the signing of the 2014 BLA, is straight linked to sustaining structural violence as a way to profit the 2 governments and their recruitment corporations, 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 grasp 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 corporations in each international locations that maintain an exploitative transnational labour system.
Kafala visa sponsorship system is prevalent all through the six international locations within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). On this system, the heads of family (cum employers) management overseas employees’ entry visas, residence permits in addition to exit permits. Beneath the Saudi Arabian Kafala system, the Saudi authorities transferred the accountability of monitoring overseas 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 overseas 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 ladies to work as home employees within the houses of the Saudi households, with an computerized renewal clause. Within the wake of the renewal in 2019 for one more 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).
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However unbeknownst to most of the people, the highest 5 leaders of this division are administrators and presidents of recruitment corporations 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), remains to be in energy. My analysis has discovered that Thuận An DMC (previously referred to as Vĩnh Cát) continues to function even with many labour violations. These corporations, represented by VAMAS’ Code of Conduct and vetted by the ILO workplace in Vietnam, proceed to get pleasure from 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 ascertain 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 underneath 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 lately launched reforms to migrant labour situations 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 placing.
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 corporations 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 method protects notoriously corrupt recruitment corporations, which goal not solely ladies in poor rural elements of Vietnam’s north-central provinces, but in addition 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 corporations that failed to guard employees in Saudi Arabia. Contained in the kafeel’s houses, most of those feminine employees undergo, as unfree labour, from being transferred from one home to a different (which is not allowed underneath 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 obtained 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 overseas short-term employees from many international locations—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 fuel, Vietnam has primarily exported cellphones, agricultural merchandise similar to rice, cashew nuts, vegatables and fruits.
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 harassed the significance of “deciding on good employers, good contracts which might be appropriate to Vietnamese employees, and utilizing skilled talent units of the employees as a foundation for negotiations as a way to elevate the wage and different rights and advantages for employees.” The response of recruitment corporations belonging to VAMAS pledges compliance with their leaders’ directives:
We acknowledge the Minister’s main suggestion 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, as a way to guarantee their labour rights.
However how concerning the working and dwelling situations 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, development, mechanics, home work, chauffeuring; a couple of are engineers and professionals. However there isn’t any data in official information shops or authorities notices, reviews, or another publicly out there databases concerning the working situations of those largely low-skilled short-term employees.
Conclusion
It’s ironic that over 5,000 export employees in Saudi Arabia aren’t 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 study from good practices within the case of the Philippines and Cambodia. These two international locations signed their BLAs with Saudi Arabia in 2013 and 2016 respectively. However these two international locations instantly protected their employees by creating and utilizing the Normal 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 Normal Employment Contract (SEC) has two columns in two languages: English and Arabic, clearly spelled out contact data 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 acknowledged clearly on the SEC for correct implementation. And on the finish, 4 signatures are required to acknowledge all of the phrases acknowledged on this SEC: the Saudi employer, the Saudi recruitment company, the home employee and their recruitment company. This stage of transparency is essential to guarantee that the recruitment businesses are held accountable to supervise and implement the contract adequately. Furthermore, this SEC offers the framework for employees to grieve and/or to complain when their rights aren’t 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 dwelling international locations, 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 ladies home employees, promised within the BLA. As demonstrated by greatest 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 could be a easy first step for the Vietnamese and Saudi governments to take, one needs to be cautious that SEC might not be an efficient instrument to make sure transnational home labour rights. Findings from a 2023 examine based mostly on a survey of Filipino and Indonesian ladies 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 at the very least one type of mistreatment, starting from extreme working hours, late fee of wage, denial of sooner or later off per week, and even restricted entry to meals and medical care, in addition to bodily and emotional abuse.
An neutral third social gathering, 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.