>> George Sadek: Hi, everyone. My name is George Sadek. I am the Foreign Law Specialist at the Law Library of Congress, working on Arabic speaking countries. In the next 45 minutes or so, I will speak about the problem of "Trafficking in Persons for the Purpose of Forced Labor and Sexual Exploitation in the Gulf Cooperation Council for the Arab states" or what is known as the GCC. I choose to talk today about Trafficking in Persons because it is not just an important legal topic, but also because this issue affects millions of foreign nationals working as domestic workers and construction workers in the six countries of the GCC. Those countries are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman. The topic that I will discuss today has a wealth of information. However, due to a time limitation, I will focus primarily on issues that I believe are important in raising awareness about the problem of Trafficking in Persons in the GCC countries and how those countries are fighting that problem. I will explain the definition of the term 'Trafficking in Persons' under international law. I will also discuss the difference between People Smuggling and Human Trafficking. Then I will talk briefly about the main instrument of International Law combating the issue of Trafficking in Persons, which is the UN protocol to prevent, suppress and punish Trafficking in Persons. After I talk about the provisions of the UN Protocol, I will discuss how GCC countries combat the problem of human trafficking on the domestic level. And finally, I will touch upon the impact of COVID 19 pandemic on the anti-human trafficking efforts in those countries. Some of you might be confused between Trafficking in Persons and People Smuggling. This diagram made by the International Organization of Migration highlights the differences between People Smuggling and Trafficking in Persons. I would like to highlight one of the main differences between both terms, which is the purpose of human trafficking and people smuggling. The purpose of human trafficking is to subject the trafficked victim to a form of exploitation. It could be sexual exploitation or forced labor/labor exploitation. Accordingly, the trafficked victim could be residing in the country of destination legally while suffering some sort of exploitation. On the other hand, the purpose of people smuggling is to facilitate the illegal entry of a migrant in order to live in a better economic conditions in the country of destination. The factor of exploitation doesn't exist in this case. In fact, there is an agreement between the migrant and the smuggler to facilitate the illegal entry of this migrant to the country of destination. Starting this slide, I will address the definition of Trafficking in Persons under international law. As I previously mentioned, the main international legal instrument governing the issue of human trafficking is the General Assembly Resolution 55/25 of November of the year 2000 on the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons. The U.N. Protocol Against Trafficking in Persons defines human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation or forced labor as, "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring receipt of of persons by means of threat or use of force, coercion, abduction, fraud and deception." So based on the definition of human trafficking, under the protocol, we have two pillars of the offense of human trafficking, which is the use of force, the coercion and the deception. As you will see later during this presentation, that deception is the most common method to recruit foreign workers into GCC countries for either sexual exploitation or forced labor. The protocol has 178 state parties and entered into force on December 25th, 2003. All GCC countries are member states of the protocol. The purpose of drafting the protocol is to achieve three goals. First goal is to prevent and combat Trafficking in Persons. The second goal is to protect and assist victims of human trafficking. And the third and final goal is to promote cooperation among state parties. The U.N. Protocol on Human Trafficking mandates state parties to adopt domestic legislation to combat this problem and assist victims of human trafficking. Additionally, the protocol requires member states to offer victims of trafficking appropriate housing, as well as adequate medical and psychological care. During my presentation, we will see how countries of the GCC adhere to such requirements by the UN Protocol. Moving on from the UN protocol, over the next couple of slides, I want to briefly talk about the Gulf Cooperation Council as an organization. The GCC was established in May of 1981. As I mentioned previously, it encompasses six Arab countries which are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. I included the flags of those countries here on this slide, for your general information. One of the main objectives of the GCC council is to have similar regulations in various fields within its countries. This includes the field of social and health affairs as well as the legislative and administrative affairs. Accordingly, it's important to note that GCC countries domestic legislation on combating human trafficking share many similarities. I also would like to add that Article three of the GCC Human Rights Declaration prohibits all forms of human trafficking, particularly those involving women and children. This is the logo of the Council, for your information. I also included a link to the GCC official website as well. This is also a map to show you where the states of the GCC are located. All member states are highlighted on the map. They are next to the kingdom of Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. They also face the African countries of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia from across the Red Sea. Because of their geographical proximity to the GCC area, those African countries become, in some cases, countries of origin of human trafficking to the GCC region. In the next number of slides, I will talk about similarities and differences of anti-human trafficking measures in all GCC countries under five categories. First category focuses on the scope of the problem of Trafficking in Persons in all GCC countries, as I mentioned. Second category covers the domestic legislation on human trafficking and laws regulating the labor rights of foreign domestic workers. Third category addresses measures adopted by the government of GCC countries to combat the problem. The fourth category will be on types of training offered to government officials in the GCC countries, including members of the public prosecution and judges. The fifth and last category focuses on convictions of the local courts. I would like to emphasize that I relied on the 2022 report on Trafficking in Persons issued by the United States Department of State, or what is known as the Tip Report, as one of my main sources of information pertaining to the scope of the problem in the GCC region. In my opinion, the TIP report includes excellent information about the problem of Trafficking in Persons, not only in the GCC countries, but also in all countries worldwide. GCC countries share many similarities pertaining to the scope of the problem of human trafficking. First, let us get familiar with some of the main countries of origin of human trafficking to the GCC... Region. These countries are Ethiopia, Somalia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines. These are the countries with the highest population of foreign workers at risk of being trafficked. One of the most vulnerable population to face labour exploitation due to their lack of education and not speaking the Arabic language is the foreign construction workers residing and working in the GCC countries. Non-payment or late payments of wages remains the prominent complaint from some of those foreign workers. Some foreign workers are forced to work beyond their contract term or may not receive a copy of their employment contract, which makes them unaware of their job responsibilities. In some cases, in Saudi Arabia in particular, foreign women and unaccompanied children are forced to work as part of organized begging rings. An anti begging law, which was adopted in September of 2021, imposes one year prison sentence and or paying a fine against offenders. We will talk later about a court case addressing this type of illegal activity. Similar to construction workers, foreign female domestic workers are at high risk of being trafficked and exploited in the GCC countries because they don't speak the Arabic language and being isolated somehow in the house of their employers. In some cases, the foreign workers are promised by the recruitment agency to obtain jobs in the GCC countries with high salaries. However, those workers face non-payment of wages, lengthy working hours in violation of the contractual agreement, deprivation of food, continuous threats of deportation by the employers, physical abuse and restrictions of their movement. Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation also exists in the GCC countries. According to the Global Report of Human Trafficking, issued in January of 2023, just last month by the UN Office on Crime and Drugs, cases of human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation have occurred in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Persons could be trafficked from one GCC country to another. Let me give you an example here. According to the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery, an NGO organization to combat human trafficking, there was a human trafficking case of two female foreign workers who used to work in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, one of the GCC countries I just mentioned. Those female workers were promised a job through a recruitment agency with a better salary in the Kingdom of Bahrain, another GCC country. Upon their arrival, they were confined in a building and forced into illegal prostitution for several months before they were able to escape. Prostitution is illegal in all GCC countries. On this slide, I would like to focus briefly on the scope of the problem in the State of Qatar. The country hosted the FIFA World Cup during the months of November and December of 2022. I'm referring to the FIFA World Cup because there were a number of reports that talk about human trafficking cases among some of the foreign construction workers who worked on constructing the facilities where the World Cup took place. According to the BBC News agency, some of those workers were promised high salaries when they arrived in Qatar. They have not been paid their wages for weeks. Those workers came mainly from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and the Philippines. According to an Amnesty International report, there were allegations that the passports belonged to some of those workers were also confiscated by their employers. Despite that, the Qatari law explicitly prohibits this act. So I talked about the scope of the problem over the past slides. Starting this one, I would like to talk about the second category, which is the domestic legislation to combat human trafficking. GCC countries passed two types of legislation to tackle the problem of Trafficking in Persons. The first type of legislation is the anti-human trafficking laws. The second type is the laws protecting the rights of domestic workers. As I mentioned previously, they are a vulnerable population at the risk of being trafficked. In the domestic anti-human trafficking legislation, all GCC countries adopt the same definition of the offence of human trafficking. Such definition was issued by the UN Protocol on Trafficking in Persons. I talked about that definition earlier. Royal Decree No. (M/40) of 2009 of Saudi Arabia has expanded the definition of a human trafficker to include any person who takes advantage of others vulnerability to exploit them. The penalty imposed by the GCC countries on offenders committing the crime of Trafficking in Persons for the purpose of labour or sexual exploitation ranges between 3 and 15 years of imprisonment in GCC countries. So there is about 12 years of imprisonment difference between the minimum and maximum penalty imposed by these countries. Let me give you a couple of examples of what I'm talking about here. Royal Decree No. 126 of 2008 of the country of Oman, sanctions whoever commits the crime of trafficking with a term of imprisonment with three years. While the Royal Decree No. (M/40) of 2009 of Saudi Arabia sanctions the same offense with a term of imprisonment not exceeding 15 years. So we have a minimum and maximum penalty here. In addition to the penalty of imprisonment, offenders of the crime of human trafficking may pay a fine. Royal Decree No. (M/40) of 2009 of Saudi Arabia has the maximum amount of fine among all GCC countries. The fine could reach to 266,000 USD after the local currency exchange rate. Under aggravated circumstances such as the traffic victim is a minor or an organized crime group, is involved in human trafficking activities, GCC countries enhance the punishments to a term of imprisonment between 15 years and life imprisonment. Law number 91 of 2013 of Kuwait, for example, enhances the penalty of imprisonment against the offender from seven years to 15 years under the aggravated circumstances I just mentioned. Likewise, federal law number one of 2015 of the United Arab Emirates enhances the penalty to life imprisonment under the same aggravated circumstances. In addition to the criminal penalties, laws of the GCC countries require the confiscation of any assets used in committing the offence of Trafficking in Persons such as real estate, property or personal properties like cars and so forth. The law also requires the freezing of bank accounts used in illegal financial transactions related to human trafficking. Laws of the GCC countries criminalizing human trafficking, such as Article 4 of law number 15 of 2011 of the state of Qatar and Article 5 of the Royal Decree No. (M/40) of 2009 of Saudi Arabia removed the criminal liability of the victims of human trafficking. Countries such as United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Bahrain, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Kuwait, call in their domestic legislation for adequate protection granted to victims of human trafficking. I did read that the United Arab Emirates applies something similar to witness protection program in human trafficking criminal cases. In addition, domestic anti-human trafficking legislation of GCC countries mandate law enforcement authorities when they arrest victims of human trafficking to refer those victims to designated shelters until they go back to their countries of origin. Concerning new proposed amendments to domestic legislation on human trafficking, in June of 2022, the Saudi government proposed new amendments to the anti-human trafficking law. The main objective of the proposed amendments is to enhance the penalties against offenders and expand the powers of the National Anti-human Trafficking Committee. I included a link to the proposed amendments for your information here on this slide. I also did read that the country of Oman proposed a new amendment to its law criminalizing human trafficking. However, unfortunately, I was unable to locate a copy of such amendment. I didn't see any other reports talking about other amendments that GCC countries are planning to do in the time being regarding anti-human trafficking legislation. So over the past slides, I talked about the first type of domestic legislation on human trafficking. Starting this slide, I will talk about the second type, which is domestic legislation aiming at protecting the foreign domestic workers from any labor exploitation. As we saw, GCC countries share similar provisions in their anti-human trafficking laws. The same case applies to laws regulating the work of domestic workers. For instance, GCC laws on domestic workers ban employers from assigning foreign domestic workers duties other than those cited in the employment contract. Laws on domestic workers also require the employer to provide the foreign domestic worker with adequate housing accommodation and medical care. GCC countries such as Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and United Arab Emirates explicitly prohibit recruitment companies from receiving any advance payment from foreign domestic workers to grant them a job in any of these countries. Moreover, the State of Kuwait and the State of Qatar banned recruitment companies from hiring foreign domestic workers who are older than 60 years of age. Employers have no right to confiscate the passports of foreign domestic workers under the GCC labor laws and laws regulating the work of domestic workers. Some countries, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the State of Qatar, impose fines against individuals confiscating the passport of their employees. All laws of GCC countries require the employer of a foreign domestic worker to give her a copy of the employment contract and pay the worker for all the work she has done. The employer doesn't have the authority to force the domestic worker to work for a third party. Let me give you an example here. According to Article 7 of Resolution No. 310 of 2013 of Saudi Arabia, the employer cannot force the worker to work for other individuals. Some GCC countries have adopted extra measures to protect foreign domestic workers. Let me give you a couple of examples as well. The Kingdom of Bahrain, under Resolution No. 4 of 2014, prohibits individuals with past criminal convictions from hiring domestic workers. Likewise, Federal Law No. 9 of 2022 of United Arab Emirates obligates recruitment agencies to provide the foreign domestic worker with detailed information about the nature of the job and the amount of salary before bringing the worker to the United Arab Emirates. Finally, loss of some of the GCC countries, such as the country of Oman and the United Arab Emirates, required the employer to provide the domestic worker with a travel ticket to go back to her country of origin upon the completion of the employment contract or upon its termination. So I talked about the scope of the problem and domestic legislation to combat human trafficking. Starting this slide, I will talk about government measures to combat this problem in the GCC region. Since countries of the GCC share similarities concerning the scope of the problem, the governments of those countries have adopted the same anti-human trafficking measures. For example, GCC governments have announced that they have an anti-human trafficking national action plans concerning the assistance offered to victims of Trafficking in Persons. GCC countries worked closely with Red Crescent Authority and local Ministries of Health to provide adequate medical treatment to victims of human trafficking. Some GCC countries such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain has provided legal services to victims of human trafficking as well. Each country in the GCC has created a National Committee against Human Trafficking. The main purpose of those national committees is to propose anti-human trafficking, legal measures and coordinate anti-human trafficking efforts among government agencies. The Ministry of Interior, which is an equivalent to the Department of Homeland Security here in the United States, in each of the GCC countries, has created an anti-human trafficking hotline to receive complaints related to potential cases of human trafficking. GCC countries like Bahrain and Qatar have produced a handbook for their law enforcement officers and labour inspectors on the best methods to identify human trafficking victims. GCC countries have followed Article 6 of the UN Protocol on Trafficking in Persons, which requires state members to establish shelters to accommodate victims of human trafficking and offer them adequate assistance. Some countries, such as Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have followed Article 8 of the UN Protocol, which mandates state members to assist trafficking victims of human trafficking to return to their countries of origin. For the first time, the country of Oman established the first human trafficking shelter for males, victims of human trafficking. Usually shelters accommodated female victims of human trafficking. However, Oman decided to provide shelters to males and females victims of human trafficking. In addition to the government shelters, some of the GCC countries, such as United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Bahrain, established a Trafficking Victim Assistance Fund to provide victims of human trafficking with a financial assistance while they are residing in the trafficking shelter. The Bahraini authorities also granted an opportunity to victims of human trafficking to reside in Bahrain through what is called the Flexible Permit program that was introduced in 2017. The program grants the opportunity to victims of human trafficking to work and reside in Bahrain without an employment sponsorship. The employment sponsorship or what is called in Arabic, the Kafala is something in all system in GCC country. I'm not going to talk about it today because this needs another presentation. But all what I can say here that this program allowed victims of human trafficking to stay in Bahrain and work there without an employment sponsorship. However, the Bahraini authorities suspended this program just last year in October of 2022. It is important to say that Kingdom of Bahrain is classified by the 2022 TIP report as a Tier one country in the fight against human trafficking. Tier one countries are the ones that fully comply with all the standards cited by the United States Trafficking Victims Protection Act to eliminate all forms of Trafficking in Persons. One of the main anti-human trafficking measures that was adopted by most of the GCC countries is the launch of public awareness campaigns to educate the public about the causes of human trafficking, how to identify trafficking victims and penalties under the domestic laws against the crime of human trafficking. In addition to their public awareness campaign about human trafficking, some GCC countries, such as the State of Qatar and the State of Kuwait, began to educate foreign domestic workers about their rights under the domestic laws. I talked about those rights previously under the Domestic Legislation category. Let me give you an example about this kind of campaign targeting domestic workers. In the State of Kuwait, the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has sponsored an awareness campaign entitled The National Campaign to Enlighten Domestic Workers. I included the logo of the campaign here on this slide and a link to the Ministry of Waqf. The International Organization of Migration has also collaborated with the Kuwaiti Ministry of Interior to produce brochures included the rights of domestic foreign workers under the Kuwaiti law and the duties of the employers regarding those foreign workers. Some GCC countries such as Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have created what is called the Wage Protection System for private sector workers. The system is designed to alert the ministries of labour in these countries to instance of non-payment or delayed payment of workers wages. Employers, in violation with the wage system will be fined. If there is a repetition of such violation, the employer will be banned from hiring any workers in the future. GCC countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain allow foreign workers to file complaints against their employers before a government body designated to investigate those types of complaints while investigating the complaint of a foreign worker, such government body has the right to refer the employer to the public prosecution for criminal investigation if it sees a potential case of human trafficking. So over the past slides, I talked about the scope of the problem, the domestic legislation against human trafficking and government measures. Starting this slide, I will talk about what types of anti-human-trafficking training offered to government officials. GCC countries offer their immigration officers, Ministry of Interior personnel, members of the public prosecution and judges with training programs on how to identify victims of human trafficking and apply domestic legislation against such offenders. National committees to combat human trafficking in the GCC countries worked with international organizations such as International Organization of Migration, the IOM and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime to offer training to members of law enforcement agencies and public prosecution on investigating, questioning, evidence gathering and search procedures in criminal cases related to Trafficking in Persons. The GCC countries such as United Arab Emirates have provided anti-human trafficking training on the federal and local levels. To enhance the investigation skills of its law enforcement officials pertaining to human trafficking cases, the local police department of the Emirates of Dubai worked with the Federal National Committee to combat human trafficking, to train 118 law enforcement officers on how to investigate human trafficking crimes. Labor inspectors in some of GCC countries have also received anti-human-trafficking training program. The program focused on identifying victims of human trafficking, illicit methods of recruitment of foreign workers, and the government's responsibility to protect and assist victims of trafficking in persons under international law and the domestic legislation. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, some government officials have participated in virtual anti-human-trafficking training. Let me give you one example here. The Qatari government officials participated in a virtual anti-human-trafficking training organized by the US Department of Justice. Also, some GCC countries worked with academic institutions to provide training to their government officials. For example, the Embassy of the State of Qatar in Washington, DC worked in cooperation with two academic institutions, the Hamad Bin Khalifa University, a Qatari local university, and an American university, which is Stanford University, to educate Qatari government officials about the causes and consequences of human trafficking and the definition of human trafficking under international and domestic laws. So I already talked about four categories, which are the scope of the problem, domestic legislation to combat human trafficking, government measures to tackle this problem, types of training offers to government officials. The last category that I would like to talk about is in-- The next few slides is the prosecution and court convictions of the crime of human trafficking. In this category, I will highlight how members of the public, prosecution and local courts apply anti-human-trafficking legislation. Regarding the definition, regarding the investigation of human trafficking cases, Ministries of Interior and the public prosecution in all GCC countries created anti-human trafficking units to investigate human trafficking cases. After investigating a trafficking case, members of the public prosecution in the GCC countries could charge offenders under the anti-human trafficking laws that I talked about earlier and provisions of the penal code penalizing physical assault, attempted murder, torture, confinement against one's will and abduction. Local court system in all GCC countries are active in convicting those who have committed the offence of human trafficking. Let me provide you with a examples of four criminal court convictions that took place in four different countries of the GCC. Those court convictions are related to three types of human trafficking. For human trafficking for the purpose of forced begging. We talked about it earlier. The second type is the trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation and trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Concerning the first conviction, the criminal court in the west of Saudi Arabia has convicted a man for forcing a foreign boy to be a part of a begging ring. The first instance court punished the defendant with a term of imprisonment, and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the lower court. Second court conviction is from the State of Kuwait. On June 7th of 2020, the Kuwaiti authorities arrested a former lawmaker from the country of Bangladesh. By the name of Muhammad Shahid for promising foreign workers employment in Kuwait and using fake employment contracts for jobs that do not exist. Those foreign workers ended up working in Kuwait illegally and under unsafe working conditions. The court in Kuwait has convicted Mr. Shahid of human trafficking and sentenced him to seven years in prison with hard labour and paying a fine. The third court conviction took place in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The Bahraini Court of Cassation, the highest court in the court system, upheld a ten year prison sentence for two women convicted of human trafficking. The two women posted a false job advertisement on social media were able to recruit a female foreign national. Once the victim arrived to Bahrain, her passport was confiscated and the victim was forced into illegal prostitution. In the last case, the first Criminal court of United Arab Emirates, one of the nine emirates in the union, had sentenced a male defendant to a life imprisonment for forcing female foreign nationals into illegal prostitution after promising them to work as house cleaners in the United Arab Emirates. The defendant appealed the ruling of the Abu Dhabi Court of first instance. The appellate court commuted the prison sentence to ten years instead of life imprisonment. In the last slide of my presentation, I would like to touch upon the impact of COVID 19 pandemic on trafficking in persons in the GCC countries. Covid 19 pandemic impacted three different areas. The first one is the movement between countries. Second is the efforts to identify victims of human trafficking. Third is the trial proceedings of trafficking cases. Due to border closures and travel restrictions imposed by the governments of the GCC countries, movement of people completely stopped. Such measures reduced the numbers of the trafficked victims moving from countries of origin to the country of destination. Of course this is something good. However, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime recent report on human trafficking, preventive measures to combat the spread of the virus made the task of identifying victims of human trafficking more difficult. Finally, some countries of GCC, such as Kingdom of Bahrain and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates switched to virtual trial hearings to avoid the spread of the virus in their courts. Thank you for your time. Next webinar will be on Italian Legislative Framework for the Return of the Unlawfully Obtained Artwork, and it will take place on March 30th, 2022. I think we have some time to get questions and if you have any further questions after the day of the presentation, please send them to Ask the Librarian, a link on the slide I have here. So... Our first question is... "Are there any statistics regarding the number of persons being trafficked to the GCC countries?" Unfortunately, I don't have credible numbers to share with you. There's no official statistics published by the GCC countries. There's also no credible numbers even issued by the GCC, the NGOs, communities regarding this issue. "May you please go into further details regarding... regarding available shelters to traffic victims. Do they exist in all Gulf countries? How can victims access them?" Okay. So the first question is about the availability of shelters based on the laws of human trafficking. All GCC countries have shelters of human trafficking. They even have two types of shelters. Private shelters issued or created by the embassies of the countries of origin and shelters issued or created by the countries of destination, which is the GCC countries. The law, as I mentioned in my presentation, dictates the-- if there is any law enforcement officials arrested human trafficking victims, they can, you know, they send them directly to the trafficking victim shelters. Also, trafficking victims can call the National Committee Against Human Trafficking. They will guide those victims to the designated human trafficking shelters. Okay. This is second question. "Hello. I'm wondering in what ways are... women, children, and workers being educated on their rights and protections against trafficking, or how accessible this information for them? Who can they report to if the rights are infringed on?" As I mentioned, the countries of destination, the GCC countries. They had a public awareness campaign to the public and also to the vulnerable population, like domestic workers. According to reports that I read, those... the campaigns published brochures in different languages. And those brochures are supposed to be disseminated in the malls and in to embassies, in the airports and in different places. So this is how the victims of trafficking or women, children or foreign workers are educated about their rights. Also, the public are also educated, like, you know, they tell you if you did this, the penalty of human trafficking is that. So this is one other issue. And if you need more information about it, there is a lot of reports published by the IOM and even the national committees of human trafficking about how to educate or the public or what to do in order to access this information. Okay. There's another question here. "There have been many laws, regulation created to allow for protection. But how are employers and human traffickers held accountable? Are there regular audits or regulatory bodies that do physical search or checks to ensure work environment are meeting the GCC standards? There has been a many laws created to allow protection, but how are they held accountable?" They are held accountable, as I mentioned by, you know, by prosecuting them. I mentioned four different court convictions from four different countries. I could have mentioned more. There is one case in Kuwait about an employer, you know, was imprisoned for ten years for torturing her, domestic worker and also there's another case in Saudi Arabia also. Traffickers, you know, went into, actually the court sentenced them to imprisonment, I think maybe ten years of imprisonment. I'm not sure. You know, I think the ten years of imprisonment and fine. So as I mentioned, there are active convictions. So this is how you hold people accountable. Regarding the audit of workplace, there are labor inspectors in the Ministry of Labor. There is also a hotline, as I mentioned, there are hotline that you can call and report human trafficking cases or potential human trafficking cases. So there are different ways to do it. And also the, you know, if you want the National Committee to combat human trafficking, you can contact them as well. And like, you know, as for how, you know, how those people are getting accountable in terms of any new laws that issued recently in the countries and regarding human trafficking or other laws regarding labor trafficking in particular, or trafficking for the purpose of forced labor. Okay. "Do you have information regarding the..." I just want to make sure that we didn't pass time. Okay. "Do we have information regarding the number of court convictions related to human trafficking?" Yes. This, I have. I want to share with you two different credible sources. The first credible source is the TIP report. They have some, that 2022 TIP report. They have definitely some numbers regarding the court convictions. The second credible source that I could share with you is the UN report on global trafficking that was just issued in last month in January 2023. Both report talk about the number of court convictions in each country of the GCC. But I have to tell you that the UN report talks only about court convictions between the year 2017 and 2020. You know, if you need a link to the UN report, please send a request to Ask the Librarian on this slide and I'm happy to send it to you. So... "With no credible number, how much of a deterrent of this law? So with no credible number, how much a deterrent are these laws which sound strong?" You know. I could tell you that, you know. Deterrence, again, comes from the enforcement of those laws. Based on the information I've seen and relayed to you. There are enforcement to these laws. There are convictions of these laws. So, you know, people like you do-- You put laws and people still violate those laws. And this is how, you know, you do some sort of deterrence to the criminal act. "Do you find that any GCC countries do a better job identifying labor trafficking cases than others?" You know, I did read both reports, the TIP report and the UN recent report about human trafficking. And the reports are... it's kind of, you know. Interesting that-- the UN report say that Trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation cases are more than trafficking for labour exploitation cases. But when I did read the TIP report, I could tell that in some countries they, like, I think Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, they're more. Regarding more convictions to labour exploitation, trafficking for the purpose of labour exploitation, then trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. So I advise you to go back to the TIP report. You will find your answers because they did excellent Job to put these numbers out. "The flexible permit in Bahrain was cancelled and amended last year and new flexible was announced. Can you talk more about it?" I did read about a new program that they have with more restriction to, let's say, like to regulate the labor, you know, the labor, what to say like regulations in the country. I'll be happy to give you more about this issue. But we're almost two minutes and I have two more questions to answer, so I'll be happy to answer more regarding this particular question on flexible permit in Bahrain in, you know, later in a, in a kind of like, you know, written format, because I have two more questions I have to answer here. "There were some reports about children being trafficked for camel racing in. the United Arab Emirates. Could you elaborate on that? Yes. The... Let me just do it. I have something here to say that-- Okay. You know, the United Arab Emirates had an issue of trafficking of children for the purpose of camel racing for years, and many children died during those races. However, the United Arab Emirates banned the children to participate in those kind of camel racing since 2005, according to multiple reports that I've seen, the UAE or the United Arab Emirates replaced the children with small robots that are mounted on the camel during those races. I'm afraid that I cannot, you know, answer more questions. Just one more. "Please repeat the name of the report beside the UN report." It's the TIP report. The Trafficking in Persons report issued by the State Department, 2022. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Have a good time. Thank you.