Prostitution in Kuwait

I recently received a letter from a reader about prostitution in Kuwait. The topic itself is thorny, and frankly, I don't even believe that I am writing about it in a Kuwaiti newspaper. The reader was disturbed by the faces of the women caught by the police while soliciting customers, most of whom were South Asian. He believed that in many instances, these women were forced into this profession either by dire poverty or by being tricked into it by other people. His emails made me research this issue further.I looked on the Internet and found that Kuwait, unfortunately, has a negative reputation in terms of human trafficking. A report produced by the US State Department on trafficking in persons, listed Kuwait, along with its neighbours Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as countries not making a strong effort in combating human trafficking. The report stated that between 600,000 and 800,000 men and women were trafficked as forced labour, and all too often, individuals forced into labour do not have the knowledge or the ability to file for legal protection. Living in Kuwait, I can verify that this statement is painfully true. Many women from India and Sri Lanka come to Kuwait as maids. For the most part, they live and work for decent families that pay their wages on time and treat them with respect and kindness. The misfortunate ones that end up with lousy families become so frustrated with their living conditions that they mistakenly feel life will be better outside of the homes they work for, and decide to escape. This is the fatal mistake that many domestic labourers make that ends up creating more problems than solving them. Once they run away from their employers, the police hunts them because most employers opt to end the residency of their domestic labourers and send them back to their country of origin. The women, thus, make a point to stay out of the police's eye. They opt to stay in areas mostly dominated by other domestic labourers, many of whom are men who have not been intimate with a woman for a long time. At best, these men will solicit the women for sex for money, and at worst, they will just rape them and discard of them in some way. I remember reading a news report sometime last year about how the police discovered an apartment filled with runaway maids kidnapped and forcefully turned into prostitutes by male domestic labourers, who pimp them to other domestic labourers. It was sickening because many of these women were happy to see the police pick them up, after having made an effort to dodge them. What advice can we offer domestic labourers, both men and women? For women, my advice is to stay within their employers' home, because in most cases, it will be safer than living in the street. If their employers are mistreating them by physically abusing them or withholding their wages, then I suggest they contact the recruitment agency that first brought them to the country. In Kuwait, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour is the main arm responsible for coordinating anti-trafficking activities, and has set up an inter-ministerial committee on expatriate labour to issue recommendations regarding minimum wages and establishing a standard contract for domestic workers. Furthermore, we have seen some recent convictions of recruitment agencies for labour rights abuses. The Ministry has also established a labour dispute centre to assist workers in salary disputes. Foreign workers are permitted to file civil suits against their employers and, though cases move slowly through the courts, these suits are often settled in favour of the maids. As for male domestic labourers, it is sometimes easy to abuse female domestic labourers because they believe the police will just ignore any non-Kuwaiti victims. This is wrong. The police will have no qualms about arresting any non-Kuwaiti male involved in kidnapping or prostitution and some crazy cops will relish at the thought of beating the living daylights out of anyone involved in these activities, even without the presence of sufficient evidence against him. Any man who thinks he can get away with raping a female domestic labourer needs to think long and hard about that before he goes forward with his actions. Prostitution may be the oldest profession in the world and we cannot deny that it is present in every country, even the most conservative ones. However, we should all put a concerted effort at eradicating it, because it does no benefit other than degrade and increase violence against women. French novelist Victor Hugo once said "We say that slavery has vanished from European civilisation, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution." It is about time that prostitution, just like slavery, vanishes from Kuwait.
By Shamael Al-SharikhStaff Writer (Source:Kuwait times,28/12/2006)