A new report released by France 24 has found that many foreign domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are forced to work in terrible conditions, often with abusive employers.
However, they are trapped because of a system that ties their working rights in the country to the employer.
A video posted on YouTube in late 2022 shows about a dozen veiled women standing in a room together. The women are asking for help, most of them speaking Swahili.
One of the women in the video says that they are domestic workers who are trapped in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia after fleeing their employers.
Many of the African women who travel to the Gulf States to work as domestic workers find themselves caught in terrible working conditions.
One of the reasons for that is the problematic “kafala” system, whereby foreign workers must be sponsored by a local employer, meaning that their legal status in the country is tied to that person.
