ALKHOBAR: Ten Filipino workers who were recently recruited as building electricians, as per their visas, but deployed as waiters by a local establishment in Riyadh, found out there were no jobs available for them when they were shifted to Al-Khobar to work in a hotel. The Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in the Eastern Province discovered the plight of the 10 Filipino workers when they sought the assistance of POLO welfare officers in the region. “This is another case of human trafficking, one of the many instances we Asian labor officials encounter in this country,” said a POLO welfare officer. The 10 Filipino workers have already filed a case against the local establishment and the hotel owner at the labor court here in Al-Khobar. “The workers now do not have the means to survive; they have no food, no shelter, and are asking compatriots for help”, a POLO labor interpreter told the Saudi Gazette. The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) consider human trafficking a crime against humanity. The UN stated that human trafficking involves the recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them. “By this definition, we are seeing wide scale human trafficking in this country,” the POLO labor interpreter said. The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking in Persons Protocol), the first global legally binding instrument with an agreed definition on trafficking in persons, entered into force on 25 December 2003. Saudi Arabia ratified the protocol on July 20, 2007. By ratifying the protocol, the Kingdom has stated that it adheres to the definition of trafficking in persons to “mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation, which shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.” The Kingdom, however, does not consider itself obligated to paragraph 2 of article 15 of the Protocol, which states that (in the settlement of disputes), “Any dispute between two or more States Parties concerning the interpretation or application of this Protocol that cannot be settled through negotiation within a reasonable time shall, at the request of one of those States Parties, be submitted to arbitration. If, six months after the date of the request for arbitration, those States Parties are unable to agree on the organization of the arbitration, any one of those States Parties may refer the dispute to the International Court of Justice by request in accordance with the Statute of the Court.” “By not obligating itself to the protocol's provision on the settlement of disputes, the Kingdom will continue to apply its own laws – rules and regulations – in the settlement of labor disputes involving foreign workers,” POLO welfare officials said.
