Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
The Global Slavery Index for 2023 has been released, where it rates every country for how well they combat modern slavery, which includes all kinds of forced labor and forced marriage.
It details the horrors of the kafala system, where Arab employers import workers from poor African and Asian nations and then control their lives.
This is horrific.
It does not rate the West Bank or Gaza Strip because they say the split between Hamas and the PA, as well as Israel's control of parts of the West Bank, make data collection difficult. However, it says,
Despite limited data, anecdotal evidence indicates that Palestinians experience various forms of modern slavery, including forced labour, worst forms of child labour, forced begging, and forced and child marriage. Palestinian men and boys employed in the Israeli construction sector are vulnerable to debt bondage, as discriminatory employers charge them high fees and commissions and sub-contract them to other employers illegally.[These are typically Palestinian brokers - EoZ.] Illegal workers without permits face greater risks of abuse and exploitation. Gender biases further embed women and girls’ risk of modern slavery, particularly forced commercial sexual exploitation and forced and child marriage, with risk heightened for Palestinian women and girls living in refugee camps. Palestinian government data estimates that more than 17,600 girls age 15 to 19 were married in the West Bank in 2018. In Gaza, an estimated 11 percent of women were married before the age of 18. There are also reports of women and girls being trafficked from the West Bank to the Al Naqab desert where they are forced to marry older men.
It also provides this table showing that the Palestinian Authority gives essentially no legal protection against modern forms of slavery.
And even worse is that while there are hundreds of international reporters reporting about Palestinians in the West Bank, one never sees stories about how there are next to no protections under PA law against slavery.
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