A new law was implemented by Kuwait’s National Assembly in June 2015. Employers must grant domestic workers a maximum 12-hour workday with one day off per week and 30 days paid leave per year. The law also establishes a minimum monthly wage of 45 Kuwaiti Dinar (around $150)  additional pay for over-time hours, guarantees end-of-service benefits--one month’s wage for every year worked--and bans employing domestic workers who are below age 20 or more than 50 years of age.

The assembly voted to create a centralized, government-sponsored domestic labor recruiting company. The company would replace more than 300 private offices which have been blamed various abuses. The assembly also voted to create Kuwait’s first National Human Rights Commission. Although plans are in the works, the shareholding company has not yet been implemented.

While visiting a recruitment agency in Kuwait, the women behind the counter were well-versed in the new law's rights and gave specific guidelines to abide by while "selecting" our domestic worker. Pictured here is the recruitment agency, open to the public, with piles of books containing women's work and family history, personal identification, income, and education. 

Some labor recruiting companies are complicit in trafficking. Kuwaitis have been proactive in the past year in arresting 336 violators for prosecution due to illegal recruitment agency tactics. However, according to the US state department, existing laws do not provide adequate prosecuting power or punishments for those illegal activities.

The law is a step forward, but questions remain on issues of implementation and monitoring, and domestic workers are still not allowed to join unions to protect their rights.

A domestic worker runs dressed into the ocean to scold her employer's child for taking off his swim trunks. 

I took this photo while visiting the biggest mall in the GCC, the Avenues. The maid stood out to me immediately in the restaurant, her outfit alone was a contrast to the women sitting around her. Her lonely gaze and social separation from her employers struck me. She seemed so alone. 

We don’t have the tools to identify the problematic scale of domestic worker's rights; we're not close to knowing how many domestic workers are in Kuwait, especially illegally… it’s possible that a quarter of domestic workers currently in Kuwait are unregistered and unaccounted for. Data is the only way we will actually be able to understand how big of a problem we are dealing with. We have only been looking at the tip of the iceberg. Data will bring forward advocacy programs supported by facts - allowing us to understand where the gaps of the systems are. Without the data we continue to work on improving the rights of domestic workers based on “feelings” and immediate needs, but making it difficult to reach the roots of the problems.

While Filipino, Indian, and Sri Lankan women continue to represent a significant percentage of domestic worker populations in the Arab coast, in the last few years there has been a continued increase in migrants from Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Tanzania, The Gambia, Liberia, and Madagascar.

Limitations imposed by Asian source-country governments on the recruitment of domestic workers led Gulf labor agencies to recruit more migrant workers from Africa. 

Pictured here is a domestic worker from Ethiopia, Ayana, temporarily housed at the Migrant Worker's Protection Society in Bahrain. She was a victim of a deceptive recruiting techniques used by companies to bring in migrant workers on the basis of unenforceable contracts and nonexistent positions. While waiting for her paperwork to be processed to officially return to Ethiopia, Ayana finds peace sewing and quilt making, giving gifts to friends she's made at the shelters and to those who come to visit. 

Details of a quilt Ayana made that is now hanging on the walls of the  Migrant Worker's Protection Society in Bahrain. 

Women at the Migrant Worker's Protection Society in Bahrain leave art work hanging on the walls as they move on from the shelter and into the next stage of their lives, eager to move forward and forget. 

Many initiatives I've worked on through Project 189 have focused on empowerment, including Arfaj, the domestic worker shelter education and empowerment program. Arfaj is the Arabic name for a local flower found in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, beautifully blooming every April despite the harsh conditions of its environment. Pictured here are wards at the Filipino embassy shelter participating in an art course run by a high school art teacher. We received so many kind words from the women at the completion of the course; it was their time to relax, be creative, and express themselves. 

Domestic workers in asylum work on still life and three-dimensional sketches during an art course at the Filipino embassy in Kuwait.