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The political system of Qatar is a semi-constitutional monarchy with the emir as head of state and chief executive, and the prime minister as the head of government. Under the Constitution of Qatar, the partially-elected Consultative Assembly has a limited ability to reject legislation and dismiss ministers. The first general election was held in 2021.
Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern and controversy. The Saudi government, which mandates both Muslim and non-Muslim observance of Islamic law under the absolute rule of the House of Saud, has been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. The authoritarian regime ruling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights.
A migrant worker is a person who migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have the intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work.
According to human rights organisations, the government of the UAE violates a number of fundamental human rights. The UAE does not have democratically elected institutions and citizens do not have the right to change their government or to form political parties. Activists and academics who criticize the regime are detained and imprisoned, and their families are often harassed by the state security apparatus. There are reports of forced disappearances in the UAE; many foreign nationals and Emirati citizens have been abducted by the UAE government and illegally detained and tortured in undisclosed locations. In numerous instances, the UAE government has tortured people in custody , and has denied their citizens the right to a speedy trial and access to counsel during official investigations.
Human rights in Egypt are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt under the various articles of Chapter 3. The country is also a party to numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, the state of human rights in the country has been criticized both in the past and the present, especially by foreign human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As of 2022, Human Rights Watch has declared that Egypt's human rights crises under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is "one of its worst ... in many decades", and that "tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on abusive 'terrorism' charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention." International human rights organizations, such as the aforementioned HRW and Amnesty International, have alleged that as of January 2020, there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Other complaints made are of authorities harassing and detaining "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence". The Egyptian government has frequently rejected such criticism, denying that any of the prisoners it holds are political prisoners.
Oman is an absolute monarchy in which all legislative, executive, and judiciary power ultimately rests in the hands of the hereditary sultan, and in which the system of laws is based firmly on the monarchs made laws. Although a report by the U.S. State Department, based on conditions in 2010, summed up the human rights situation in the country by asserting that the government "generally respected the human rights of its citizens,", several international human-rights groups have described the state of human rights in Oman in highly critical terms. Article 41 of Oman's statute (constitution) criminalizes any criticism of the sultan, stating that "the sultan's person is inviolable and must be respected and his orders must be obeyed".
Bahrain's record on human rights has been described by Human Rights Watch as "dismal", and having "deteriorated sharply in the latter half of 2010". Their subsequent report in 2020 noted that the human rights situation in the country had not improved.
Giovanni Vincenzo "Gianni" Infantino is a Swiss-Italian football administrator and the current president of FIFA. He was first elected to the office during the 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress in February 2016, was re-elected in June 2019 and in March 2023. In January 2020, he was also elected a member of International Olympic Committee.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Qatar face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Sexual acts of male homosexuality are illegal in Qatar, with a punishment for all convicts of up to three years in prison and a fine, and for Muslims duly convicted in a court under sharia law the possibility of a judicially sanctioned capital punishment for homosexuality; however, there are no known cases where the death penalty was judicially enforced for homosexuality, though extrajudicial murders of LGBT people are unverified.
Contemporary slavery, also sometimes known as modern slavery or neo-slavery, refers to institutional slavery that continues to occur in present-day society. Estimates of the number of enslaved people today range from around 38 million to 49.6 million, depending on the method used to form the estimate and the definition of slavery being used. The estimated number of enslaved people is debated, as there is no universally agreed definition of modern slavery; those in slavery are often difficult to identify, and adequate statistics are often not available.
The state of human rights in Qatar is a concern for several non-governmental organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, which reported in 2012 that hundreds of thousands of mostly South Asian migrant workers in construction in Qatar risk serious exploitation and abuse, sometimes amounting to forced labour. Awareness grew internationally after Qatar's selection to stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and some reforms have since taken place, including two sweeping changes in 2020.
The Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup bid was a successful bid by Qatar to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. With a population of 2 million people, Qatar was the first Arab state to host the World Cup. Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, son of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani the then Emir of Qatar, was the chairman of the bid committee. Qatar promoted their hosting of the tournament as representing the Arab World, and has drawn support from across the member states of the Arab League. They also positioned their bid as an opportunity to bridge the gap between the Arab World and the West.
Nepalis in Qatar are migrants from Nepal to Qatar, mostly migrant workers and permanent residents, as well as their locally born descendants. As of May 2017, 400 thousand Nepali Citizens lived in Qatar as migrant workers, Nepal is the second largest expatriate community in Qatar. While there are Nepalese working in the business and administrative sectors of Qatar, most workers from Nepal fall under the umbrella of unskilled labor, and hold jobs in sectors such as construction and landscaping. Many workers from Nepal are hired to work on the construction of stadiums and railways that are being designed for the 2022 FIFA World Cup to be held in Qatar. According to Time Magazine, due to the terrible working conditions in Qatar, a Nepali worker dies every other day.
Nabeel Ahmed Abdulrasool Rajab is a Bahraini human rights activist and opposition leader. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch's Middle East Division, Deputy Secretary General for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), former chairman of CARAM Asia, member of the Advisory Board of the Bahrain Rehabilitation and Anti-Violence Organization (BRAVO), and Founding Director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR).
The kafala system is a system used to monitor migrant laborers, working primarily in the construction and domestic sectors in Gulf Cooperation Council member states and a few neighboring countries, namely Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Minod Moktan, better known as Minu was a Nepali human rights activist and singer. In 2003, he founded the rock band Stop Crackdown, which became a cultural symbol of migrant workers' struggles within the broader social movements of South Korea. Through Stop Crackdown and work with groups such as Migrant Workers TV, Minu advocated for better working conditions and fairer judicial treatment of migrant workers by the South Korean government. In 2009, Minu was deported to Nepal after living in Korea for 18 years.
Migrant workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council region involves the prevalence of migrant workers in the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Together, these six countries form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), established in 1981. The GCC cooperates on issues related to economy and politics, and the subject of migrant workers constitutes a substantial part of the council's collaboration. All of the GCC countries are dependent on migrant labor to bolster and stimulate economic growth and development, as the GCC countries possess an abundance of capital while the domestic labor capacity is low. Although migrant workers in the Persian Gulf region amount to no more than 10% of all migrants worldwide, they constitute a significant part of the populations of their host countries.
The public health measures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic effectively contained and reduced the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on a global scale between the years 2020–2023, and had several other positive effects on the natural environment of planet Earth and human societies as well, including improved air quality and oxygen levels due to reduced air and water pollution, lower crime rates across the world, and less frequent violent crimes perpetrated by violent non-state actors, such as ISIS and other Islamic terrorist organizations.
The treatment of South Asian labourers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region is an ongoing issue between members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations and the wealthy oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council. The current large number of migrants from South Asia to the Persian Gulf began in the 1960s, when the oil boom in the Gulf Arab countries resulted in migrant labourers. This further increased with the development of large mega-cities. With the growth of megacities of Dubai, Doha and Riyadh, the need for construction labourers grew. Migrants from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh were contracted to develop the mushrooming skyscrapers. Many of these migrants were brought into the GCC under the kafala system, a sponsor-based system used in the GCC, which is seen by many human rights groups as highly exploitative, since their passports are confiscated and are forced to work in low-level conditions, with cramped living quarters, low salary, and sometimes even without their due pay; when exploitation is brought up or exposed by media or the labourers, their employers are rarely punished.
There have been several criticisms and controversies of perceived human rights violations related to the organisation and hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. There have long been concerns for the state of human rights in Qatar, with the state accused of sportswashing in hosting the World Cup.
References
- ↑ "Kenyan blogger: 'I thought I may never make it out of Qatar'". BBC News. September 16, 2021.
- ↑ "Migrant rights activist Malcom Bidali reveals details of Qatar arrest". DOHA News. September 19, 2021.
- ↑ "Kenyan guard who wrote on Qatar abuses fined, leaves country". AP News. August 19, 2021.