Over the past few years, indications and manifestations of slavery, committed by governments or armed non-state actors (terrorist organizations, criminal gangs and hybrid groups), have been on the rise in the Middle East. This is evident in specific crimes of enslavement, servitude and forced labor, forced marriage, sexual violence, systematic rape, human trafficking, especially of children and women, enslavement of migrants in detention centers and other slavery-like practices.

Manifestations of modern-day slavery are visible in the flourishing slave trade on the outskirts of Tripoli, persecution of religious minorities in the flash-points of conflict, Qatar’s violations of foreign workers’ rights, deportation of African refugees from Israel, victims of sexual slavery in Afghanistan reclaiming their stolen lives and the Tunisian government ’s announcement to out forward racial discrimination crimes for debate, which can be explained in some detail, as follows:

Slave Markets 

1- The upswing in slave trade on the outskirts of Tripoli: The smuggling rings exploit the collapse of the regime of former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi, the ensuing security vacuum and the massive fall of weapon caches into the hands of armed actors, allowing tens of thousands of people to cross North African countries into Italy, located 300 kilometers from the Libyan coastline. Libya has thus become a transit center for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa (Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Gambia), who want to cross over to Europe. However, they are subject to rape, torture and slavery due to the inability of authorities to control the flow of refugees.

In this context, a report aired by CNN, on November 14, and was widely circulated on social networks, referred to auctioning off two young men as farmhands for 1200 Libyan dinars or $400 each, and that they are held for two or three months in prison. In a press statement on November 19, Deputy Prime Minister of Libya’s National Accord Government, Ahmed Maiteeq announced that his government “would commission competent committees to investigate published reports to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice”. 

The incident caused dismay among Western and Africans leaders and international organizations. For example, the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, expressed his shock, called for the prosecution of the perpetrators considering it a crime against humanity, while the President of the African Union, Alpha Condé denounced it. The European Union has expressed its abhorrence and called on France to hold an urgent meeting for the Security Council on the sale of African migrants as slaves in Libya, according to the remarks of the French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian on November 22.

In a press statement Alioune Tine, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa called for the inclusion of the issue of eradication slavery on the agenda of the Summit of the European Union and African Union, on November 29 and 30 in Abidjan, pursuant to the proposal of the Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou, adding that “a neutral commission of inquiry should be formed to see how these smuggling operations are organized and who are responsible for them, and to hold everyone accountable for their actions”. 

In last April, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) referred to the presence of “slave markets” in Libya, when spokesperson Leonard Doyle said: “There they become commodities to be bought, sold and discarded when they have no more value”.  In an open letter to the European governments last September, the head of Médecins Sans Frontières Joanne Liu denounced the "vast network of kidnappings, torture and extortion in Libya”, adding that “In their efforts to stem the flow, is allowing people to be pushed into rape, torture and slavery via criminal pay offs a price European governments are willing to pay? , before it concludes by saying “We cannot say that we did not know”. 

Slaves of ISIS 

2- Assisting oppressed minorities in the flash-points of armed conflict: Published reports by think-tanks, rights groups and the media indicate that ISIS militants, especially in their former strongholds in Syria and Iraq, were selling women and girls for servitude or exploit them for sexual slavery. The annual report of the U.S. Department of State revealed the crimes of persecution committed by ISIS through rape, abduction and servitude.

In a statement published on November 22, after her meeting with the UN Secretary-General, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley called for allocating part of the U.S. contribution to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to the Christians and Yazidis in Iraq to help them recover from their sufferings on the hands of ISIS.

In other words, this American initiative aims to dedicate more money to religious minorities in Iraq after the tragedies they have suffered, whether in the form of murder, captivity, servitude or recruitment as militants, since ISIS’ control over major areas in Iraq and Syria in mid-2014, as well as the return of those people to their homelands.

Doha’s Sins

3- Qatari violations of foreign labor rights: The Qatari government has been keen to cover up its violations by signing 36 agreements in October 2017, to protect employee’s rights with the countries that provide most of its workforce, mostly Asian, especially Nepali, who face exploitation and abuse which are tantamount to slavery in modern times, as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The Nepalese government announced the death of 188 of its nationals working in Doha in 2014 and 168 in 2013, due to long working hours, high temperature, lack of safety procedures at workplaces and terrible living conditions.

Those agreements aim at setting a minimum wage and setting up an employment fund to support the workers who have not received their salaries, allow employees to change the employer and the contracts, and impose fines on the employers who confiscate employees’ passports. Last year, the Qatari government announced that the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs would conduct investigations on the companies involved in these violations, consistently denied allegations of violation of migrant workers’ rights.

Those steps come as a proactive action for a possible international investigation that was to be conducted by the ILO regarding the violation of foreign labor rights, amid international reports that talk about “exploitation, servitude, ill-treatment and harsh working conditions, especially for workers in infrastructure and sport projects in preparation for hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup championship”. Despite the actions taken by the Qatari government, human rights groups consider that those actions do not satisfy the minimum requirements.

A delegation from the ILO visited Doha in March 2016 and conducted an assessment of the actions taken by the country to address the issues raised in a complaint concerning the violation of the provisions of the Forced Labor Convention and the Labor Inspection Convention issued by the organization. Although the report, prepared by the delegation, acknowledged the steps taken by the Qatari government to end violations of foreign labor rights, it noted that there were still many violations. Therefore, the organization postponed a decision on whether to set up a commission of inquiry for Qatar to March 2017, then to November of the same year.

Tel Aviv Concerns

4- Deportation of African refugees in Israel who fled their country, although some of them have been residing in Israel for over 10 years. On June 30, 2017, the Israeli government announced that there were 38043 African migrants in the country, including more than 27,000 migrants from Eritrea and 7896 from Sudan, while the rest were from unspecified African countries.

Last September, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited southern Tel Aviv area, amid growing discontent of public opinion over the arrival of African immigrants, with the Israelis forming the “Southern Tel Aviv Liberation Front” to pressure the government to take harsh measures against newcomers.

For his part, Netanyahu vowed to the Israeli media to “restore southern Tel Aviv to the Israelis, as Africans there are not refugees but illegal infiltrators, who obtained short-term residency visas”, which reflects the Israeli government’s awareness of the dangers of Africans staying in the country even if they are treated as “slaves”.

Bacha Bazi

5- Victims of sexual slavery in Afghanistan reclaim their stolen lives: The phenomenon of male rape has emerged as a hidden blight, affecting young boys who have been sexually enslaved for several years in the Afghan capital, Kabul, causing them to suffer from contempt. Nevertheless, when those victims become free, they face difficulties in liberating themselves from the role imposed on them, specifically the transition to a female or so-called, “bacha bazi”, which prompted the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, for the first time this year, to punish those who engage in such practices.

Some of those boys seek secret deals with Taliban, which recruit sexually enslaved boys who want to revenge what happened to them over the years, by killing their rapists in the ranks of the police forces. Meanwhile, ashamed parents try to help their surviving children who have been brutally violated. Although the victims may be fortunate in escaping from their abusers, their past continues to haunt them, according to some estimates.

Racial discrimination

6- The Tunisian government announced that it would bring the crime of racial discrimination to the table for discussion, as indicated by Mehdi Ben Gharbia, the Tunisian Minister of Relations with Constitutional Bodies, Civil Society and Human Rights, on March 21, 2017. Ben Gharbia suggested that there was a tendency to enact a clear legislative framework to punish all perpetrators of crimes motivated by color, religion or sex. The government seeks to adopt the bill in a participatory form with the components of civil society and in cooperation with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to address cases of racial discrimination.

On 24 December 2016, Tunisia witnessed a violent attack on two Congolese students studying at a Tunisian university. The incident enraged Tunisian public opinion, prompting Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef al-Shahed to declare December 26 of each year as a National Day against racial discrimination in the country. In previous media statements, al-Shahed admitted that his country is still among those countries in which black-skinned persons suffer in society, although the abolition of slavery in this country was one of the first steps taken by the former ruler of Tunisia Ahmed Pasha Bay on January 23, 1864.

Numerous cases

In sum, some countries in the Middle East, particularly in the flash-points of armed conflict, have seen a spike in human trafficking and forced labor across specific regions that constitute transit point and destination for men, women and children who are subject to exploitation by employers through low wages, physical abuse and detention on board ships, as well as extortion by security personnel. Such cases manifest the multifaceted nature of modern slavery, as evident in the estimates and surveys of the ILO and IOM.