Saudi Arabia’s reforms fail to halt abuse of Filipino helpers, Amnesty warns

Filipino domestic workers continue to endure widespread labour exploitation and sexual abuse in Saudi Arabia, according to a new Amnesty International report. The rights watchdog found conditions had barely improved despite years of promised reforms, including last year’s abolition of the kingdom’s notorious “kafala” sponsorship system. The report, based on interviews conducted in March with 19 Filipino women who worked as domestic staff in Saudi Arabia, found consistent patterns of abuse, from excessive working hours to severe restrictions on movement, confinement and sexual violence. The women’s names were changed to protect their identities. Amnesty said the findings echoed its earlier research into the experiences of Kenyan domestic workers in the kingdom, revealing near-identical abuses across nationalities. My employer used to tell me: you cannot say you’re tired Filipino domestic worker Joy* describes her time in Saudi Arabia One of the workers, identified as Joy*, described 20-hour days that began at 6am, with her employers repeatedly waking her throughout the night for more chores. “My employer used to tell me: you cannot say you’re tired or I will be angry at you,” she told Amnesty, adding that she received no overtime pay on top of her monthly salary of 1,500 riyals (US$400). Another woman who worked in Saudi Arabia between 2021 and 2023 said her working days ran from 6am to 8pm without any breaks – even for the toilet. A third said she was restricted to one egg “because the mother counted them” and a weekly ration of rice, subsisting otherwise on instant noodles. “I would wake up at around 5am and only sleep at around 2am. I was getting about two hours of sleep every night,” she said. Isabel*, meanwhile, described being sexually assaulted by her employer’s husband and fleeing to the Philippine embassy with help from other Filipino workers. “I didn’t bring anything with me because they told me I could be accused of stealing, even if the things were mine,” she said. “When I arrived at the embassy, my employer also came later and returned my belongings, including my phone and passport, and begged me not to file a case against her husband.” Amnesty said such accounts reflect a system in which contractual terms “often ceased to matter” once workers entered private homes, replaced instead by employers’ “unchecked authority”. “The testimonies … gathered over several years point to more than a pattern of abuse,” the report said. “They expose a state-run system – sustained by the kafala sponsorship framework, weak labour protections and ineffective enforcement – that continues to enable the exploitation of migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia.” Established in the 1950s to manage the influx of foreign labour amid Saudi’s oil boom, the kafala system gave employers total control over employee visas, job changes and travel, enabling passport confiscation and forced labour. It was officially abolished in June last year in favour of a contract-based model, but Amnesty found that elements of the system persisted for domestic workers in particular. “The kafala sponsorship system remains a key structural driver of abuse,” said Ella Knight, a migrant labour rights researcher with Amnesty International. By tying workers’ legal status to their employers, the system creates a dependency that, in practice, can restrict workers’ ability to change jobs or leave the country.” Knight added that the abuse was made worse by racial discrimination and the continued exclusion of domestic workers from Saudi Arabia’s core labour law. Reforms such as the 2023 Domestic Workers Regulations introduced limits on working hours, mandatory rest periods and electronic wage payments, but domestic workers still have weaker protections than most other employees in the kingdom, she said. “Despite the known risks faced by domestic workers, authorities have failed to put in place effective inspection mechanisms to identify abuse in private homes and hold perpetrators accountable,” Knight said. More than one-fifth of all overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were employed in Saudi Arabia as of 2024, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. Among the 1.25 million female OFWs in the kingdom, 68.4 per cent were in “elementary occupations” – largely domestic and cleaning roles. ‘Almost always the exception’ Domestic workers “are almost always the exception” when it comes to kafala reforms, according to Ellene Sana, executive director of the Centre for Migrant Advocacy in the Philippines She called for parallel changes, including the scrapping of penalties for workers who fled abusive employers – currently treated as a crime regardless of justification. Sana also criticised Saudi authorities’ efforts to inform employers of policy changes as “very much wanting and inadequate”, while she said a “culture of fear” around deportation or dismissal deterred workers from reporting abuse. The Philippines has repeatedly clashed with Saudi Arabia over the treatment of its citizens. It banned deployments to the kingdom in November 2021 following abuse and unpaid-wage complaints, lifting the ban a year later after bilateral talks. In 2024, controversy flared again after two Filipino domestic workers died of reported “natural causes”, despite one having complained of maltreatment days after arriving. Sana said most unskilled Filipino migrants moved abroad “out of necessity and not out of own free and informed choice”, a pattern that had not changed for much of the last half-century and left many vulnerable to abuse. “They believe that they must hang on to their jobs, no matter what,” she said, adding that language barriers, financial constraints and limited access to information about legal recourse made the problem worse. Sana called for sustained dialogue between Philippine and Saudi labour authorities alongside stronger enforcement of bilateral agreements and tighter regulation of recruitment agencies. For Knight, correcting the power imbalance between workers and employers is most important. “Ultimately, what enables employers to get away with abuses is the combination of this unequal power relationship, weak enforcement mechanisms, limited labour protections for domestic workers and the practical obstacles workers face in reporting abuse or seeking justice,” she said. *Names changed to protect identities

Saudi Arabia’s reforms fail to halt abuse of Filipino helpers, Amnesty warns

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The kingdom says kafala is gone, but advocates say employers still wield unchecked authority over domestic workers

The kingdom says kafala is gone, but advocates say employers still wield unchecked authority over domestic workers