(Beirut) - The United Kingdom government should publicly pledge to incorporate strong human rights conditions before a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is signed, a coalition of 14 human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, and trade unions said in a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer today. 

"Without strong rights protections in the forthcoming Gulf trade pact, the UK risks further contributing to pervasive abuses against migrant workers that are entrenched within the state economies of Gulf countries" said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The UK government's enthusiasm to sign post-Brexit trade agreements should not come at the expense of human rights standards."

For decades, rights groups have documented systematic human rights violations against migrant workers in all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Gulf states have systematically failed to prevent or remedy widespread labor violations against the millions of migrant workers who make up a significant proportion of these countries' workforces. 

A trade agreement with these countries risks contributing to abuses against migrant workers by further facilitating wage abuse, employer exploitation, and situations that amount to forced labor. The UK has itself failed to protect migrant workers' rights in the UK, including by failing to ratify the international Migrant Workers Convention.

The coalition of rights groups and trade unions expressed deep concern around the lack of transparency and rights protections in the forthcoming agreement. An agreement without explicit rights protections heightens the risks that UK businesses would become complicit in grave human rights abuses, the groups said. 

Source: Human Rights Watch