European Union and member states' leaders should urge their Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts to release unjustly jailed critics and commit to substantive human rights reforms at an October 16, 2024 summit, Human Rights Watch said today. The EU should also push for structural reforms on freedom of expression, freedom of association, labor rights, and women's rights in negotiations for partnership agreements.
The EU has been seeking closer political and trade ties with Gulf countries, paying little attention to human rights abuses and intensifying repression in some of them. With the sole exception of capital punishment cases, the EU remains silent on repression in the Gulf, relegating these discussions to largely unproductive bilateral human rights dialogues. Regional crises, economic opportunities, and the growing influence of some Gulf countries further contribute to the EU's reluctance to speak up.
"Seeking closer ties with some Gulf governments as their repression intensifies and serious labor rights violations persist is the opposite of what the EU should do," said Claudio Francavilla, associate EU director at Human Rights Watch. "EU leaders should make it clear that the release of critics and progress on human rights are vital for bilateral relations."
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly urged the EU to adopt a "more for more" approach in its relations with Gulf countries by linking the development of closer ties to concrete human rights progress in the Gulf. The EU should set political conditions for negotiations, require ratification of core human rights and labor rights conventions, promote participation of independent civil society, and ensure other human rights and labor rights obligations and guarantees in agreements.
Systemic labor violations are effectively state policy in the Gulf countries and are deeply entrenched within their economies. Under the kafala (sponsorship) system throughout the region, migrant workers' visas are tied to their employers, leaving workers vulnerable to wage abuse, employer exploitation, and situations that amount to forced labor. Trade unions are banned or restricted. The increased trade promised by these agreements could facilitate these abuses even further.
Human Rights Watch has also documented that Gulf countries are failing to protect outdoor migrant workers experiencing dangerous, heat-related health risks as global warming-fueled heatwaves envelope the region.
Migrant workers and the families of those who died in Qatar who contributed to make the 2022 World Cup possible are still waiting for compensation. Saudi Arabia, where labor rights abuses are pervasive, is now the sole bidder for the 2034 World Cup, in line with its "sportswashing" strategy to distract world opinion from its repression by hosting large-scale sports events. The Saudi government recently lost a bid for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council due to its serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
Repression of dissent has also been intensifying in several GCC countries, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Saudi Arabia has provided no accountability for the 2018 murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose murder was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman according to a US intelligence report. Saudi courts have been sentencing people to decades in jail and even death for tweets. Saudi authorities have put to death at least 198 people so far in 2024, the highest number recorded in the country since 1990, according to Amnesty International.
In July, the UAE convicted at least 53 defendants in a fundamentally unfair mass trial. Among them are Ahmed Mansoor, a prominent human rights defender; Nasser bin Ghaith, an academic; and Khalaf al-Romaithi, a businessman, as well as those convicted following the grossly unfair "UAE94" mass trial in 2013. The UAE is also no stranger to sportswashing, as latest exposed by the announcement the country would host preseason games for the US National Basketball Association (NBA).
In Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has pardoned around 3,000 prisoners in 2024, including hundreds of political prisoners, but not some of the most prominent human rights defenders and political activists, including Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a dual Danish-Bahraini citizen and human rights defender.
Male guardianship also remains a pervasive phenomenon across many Gulf countries. Structural discrimination against women is entrenched in many GCC states' personal status laws.
Finally, at the summit, both blocs should scrutinize each other's foreign policy and urge action to prevent abuses and uphold human rights and international humanitarian law, without double standards.
A growing body of evidence indicates that the UAE has been providing weapons and support to Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an abusive force responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country's devasting conflict. The EU should urge the UAE to stop any transfer of weapons and military equipment to warrying parties in Sudan and to comply with the UN Security Council's arms embargo on Darfur.
Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia used "incentives and threats" to ensure the discontinuation in 2021 of a UN monitoring body that was investigating rights abuses and war crimes in Yemen, including those committed by Saudi and Emirati forces. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain have also consistently failed to comment on China's crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.
EU foreign policy also contributes to rights abuses and double standards. The EU has concluded a series of deals with Mediterranean countries aimed at containing migrants' and asylum seekers' departures towards European shores, exposing them to serious abuses.
Some EU institutions and member states are also preventing the adoption of measures to address war crimes and other serious abuses by Israeli authorities against Palestinians and others in the region, and some member states continue to supply weapons to Israel despite the war crimes and other serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by its forces. The GCC should call on the EU to uphold consistent standards on the protection of human rights and international humanitarian law in its foreign policy and that of its member states.
"Human rights and international law should be the basis, not a side-thought, of EU-GCC relations and of their domestic and foreign policies," Francavilla said. "As conflicts raging in both regions are marred by an utter disregard for the laws of war, EU and Gulf leaders should commit to ensure accountability for abuses instead of fueling them."
