New human rights report exposes labor abuses at Dubai’s extravagant Expo 2020

A new report by a London-based human rights group has highlighted that migrant foreign workers who built the Dubai’s extravagant Expo 2020 site and keep it running face exploitation as well as labor abuses, are subject to abusive conditions and treatment.

According to the report published by Equidem, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is failing to protect workers from abroad who serve in positions such as security guards, cleaners and hospitality staff at the multibillion-dollar exhibition.

The report said the majority of workers interviewed were forced to pay recruitment fees in their own countries in order to secure their jobs in the UAE, often exceeding their monthly pay.

Even though the practice is illegal under Emirati law, many of the employers reportedly knew of those payments but did not intervene or reimburse the workers, creating a situation of debt bondage.

The Equidem report documented workers who were not provided with employment contracts or could not read them because they were not translated into their native language, as required by law.

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Some of the interviewed workers also said their wages were often not fully paid or given on time each month, making them unable to send money back to their families or even pay for food.

Moreover, workers were frequently denied overtime pay, termination benefits and promised bonuses.

Employers, in some cases, slashed salaries up to 75 percent as the coronavirus pandemic battered the UAE.

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“The way they treat the staff is like slaves,” one worker at the Crab Chic café overlooking Expo’s iconic dome told Equidem researchers. “It’s very tiring. I work from early in the morning till evening. Never have I received overtime payment.”

Most workers interviewed surrendered their passports to their employers and none of them could unconditionally retrieve them, despite Emirati laws that forbid companies from confiscating worker’s identity documents.

Workers also said they were targets of discrimination, describing how their race dictated their treatment and duties on site.

“Asians are given the heavy work and less pay while the Europeans and Arabs are given lighter roles with lots of income,” said one interviewee. “The Asians are the first to lose their jobs.”

The Expo 2020, which opened late in October 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and runs until March 2022, hosts 192 national pavilions representing different countries and multinational corporations.

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Mustafa Qadri, an author of the Equidem report and the group’s executive director, said, “I was honestly shocked to see just how widespread the non-compliance is and how much forced labor is happening.”

“It raises questions about how effective the labor system is in the UAE, because Expo is the most high-profile project in the country,” he added.

“The entire international community is complicit in the exploitation at the Expo. It's a scandal,” Qadri argued.

The report comes just months after prominent human rights organizations condemned the Dubai's Expo 2020 as an attempt to gloss over rights abuses committed by the UAE.

Last year, The European Parliament also called on member states to boycott Dubai’s Expo 2020, citing rights concerns.

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