MANAMA, 7 January 2005 — Human rights activists have issued a stern warning to labor agencies and customs officials in the GCC against the possibility of orphaned children, particularly young girls, from tsunami-hit areas being smuggled into the region as maids.
A member of the board of advisers of the Geneva-based Arab Center for Migrant Workers, Nabeel Rajab, said that labor agencies in the region should be extra vigilant when hiring people from Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia.
“We are worried that many of the children might end up here in the region as maids,” he said “There are reports confirming that child trafficking gangs had already moved into the areas hit by tsunami in an effort to exploit the situation,” he added.
Relief agencies estimate that more than 30, 000 children in Indonesia alone had lost one or both parents in the disaster.
Rajab, who is also president of the now dissolved Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said that prior to the Dec. 26 disaster there has been a large number of cases in Bahrain and the GCC region where young girls from Indonesia had been brought with false documents suggesting that they were of older age to work as maids.
“We do not have any exact figures on the number of children who have been brought here to work as maids, but we know it is a large number and we expect these numbers to increase in coming weeks and months,” Rajab said. He added that it would take a joint effort by the labor agencies, authorities, and human rights groups to prevent the situation from deteriorating and being exploited by traffickers.
The GCC countries have ratified the Rights of the Child Convention that outlaws child trafficking and child labor.
