This is the fifth successive year in which Anti-Slavery has had to report its serious concern to the Working Group regarding the trafficking of children for exploitation in the UAE. Children continue to be kidnapped, sold by their parents or relatives, or taken on false pretences from their own country to be used as camel jockeys in the UAE. The majority of children are from Pakistan, India or Bangladesh, but there are reports that children have been trafficked from Sudan and Mauritania for this purpose.

The use of children as jockeys in camel racing is itself extremely dangerous and can result in serious injury and even death. There is also evidence of mistreatment and torture of camel jockeys by traffickers and their employers, including depriving them of adequate food and beating them. However, the children's separation from their families and their transportation to a country where the people, culture and usually the language are completely unknown means that the children are normally unable to report incidents of abuse.

The trafficking of children for use as camel jockeys is prohibited by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and by the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Conventions No.29 on Forced Labour, No.138 on Minimum Age and No.182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour - all of which have been ratified by the UAE.

When the UAE ratified Convention No.138 it specified the minimum age for admission to employment or work as 15. Section 20 of the Federal Labour Code No.8 (1980) also prohibits the employment of any child under the age of 15. However, it should be stressed that the employment of children as camel jockeys constitutes dangerous work under Article 3 of ILO Convention No.138, as it is likely to jeopardise the health and safety of the young person. This was the conclusion reached by the ILO Conference Committee on the Application of Standards in June 2001 and by the ILO Committee of Experts in its 2002 report. Both Committees called on the UAE Government to pass a law which clearly establishes the age of 18 as the minimum age for employment for a camel jockeys, which, to date, the Government has not done.

The information below provides clear evidence that children under 15 are still being used as camel jockeys in the UAE and that this puts their health and safety in jeopardy. This
contradicts the Government's position that previous reports were isolated events that took
place outside the UAE.

Evidence of trafficking of child camel jockeys to the UAE during 2001

In 1998, Jasim Hossain Howlader was tempted by promises of money and agreed to let a trafficker take his son, Najmul, to the UAE to work as a camel jockey. Two and a half years later, in December 2000, Najmul was returned to Bangladesh. By this time he had sustained irreversible damage to both kidneys, probably from being deprived of water in order to make him lose weight. He was taken to hospital in Dhaka, but died on 11 April 2001, aged seven.

On 29 May 2001, Ansar Burney, the Chairman of a human rights organisation, the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust International (ABWTI), reported that Amir Abbas, a six year old boy from Pakistan, had died after being seriously injured when he fell from a camel in Al Ain (UAE) on 13 May. When Amir Abbas arrived in the UAE with his family in 1999, the trafficker took away his father's passport and took Amir and his seven year old brother Nadir away to work as camel jockeys. ABWTI rescued 49 children from camel stables in the UAE during the first five months of 2001.

On 19 December, a feature article for the Xinhua News Agency contained interviews with four young Bangladeshi boys who had been repatriated. They described being beaten and underfed while working as camel jockeys in UAE. The article also referred to another nine year old boy who lost an eye while working as a camel jockey.

Documentary footage taken by Karachi-based NGO Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid in March 2002 shows children recently returned from Dubai describing how they were beaten and given electric shocks if they did not perform well in races.

These cases are part of a much wider problem. Ansar Burney of the ABWTI estimates that around 30 boys a month are being kidnapped in Pakistan alone and taken to the UAE. While a report from the Centre for Women and Children Studies in Dhaka, Bangladesh found that during the 1990s 1,683 Bangladeshi boys were victims of trafficking. The report noted that the overwhelming majority of these boys were younger than 10 years old and most were likely to be used as camel jockeys in Gulf countries. This report was compiled on the basis of news clippings. However, a study carried out by the Bangladesh National Women's Lawyers Association estimates that as many as 7,000 people are trafficked out of Bangladesh each year.

The US State Department's country report on human rights practices in the UAE for 2001 confirms that there "continue to be credible reports that hundreds of underage boys from South Asia, mainly between 4 and 10 years of age, continue to be used as camel jockeys".

The State Department report also highlights the fact that many of those employing camel jockeys under the age of 15 can do so with impunity:

"Relevant laws in some cases are enforced against criminal trafficking rings, but not against those who own racing camels and employ the children, because such owners come from powerful families that are in effect above the law. According to credible sources there were at least 25 cases during the year [2001] of underage camel jockeys who were repatriated to their countries of origin … camel owners are not prosecuted
for violations of the labor laws; consequently the demand for child jockeys
continues unrestricted."

Conclusion

The above information indicates that hundreds of boys are being trafficked for use as camel jockey in the UAE each year. Furthermore, there can be no question that the employment of children as camel jockeys is a dangerous activity which should, according to Article 3 of ILO Convention No.138, only be performed by person who are 18 or older.

Not only is existing legislation inadequate, but the Government of the UAE has not taken adequate measures to enforce existing laws and punish those responsible for trafficking and employing boys under the age of 15 as camel jockeys.

While the above information refers specifically to the UAE, Anti-Slavery is also concerned that child camel jockeys are being used in other Gulf States. For example, a 45 minute documentary by the Qatar based satellite channel Al-Jazeera filmed in 2000/2001 clearly shows children in Qatar riding and falling from camels. It also includes hospital footage of a young Asian camel jockey who sustained serious head injuries as a result of a fall and who later died.

Anti-Slavery welcomes the commitment given by the Supreme Council of Family Affairs in Qatar in 2001 to address the issue of child camel jockeys and the Qatari Government's move to provide free primary education for non-citizen children. However, it is important that these commitments are followed up by concrete actions to ensure that no children under the age of 18 are used as camel jockeys in Qatar.

In this context, Anti-Slavery urges all Gulf States where there is a possibility that child camel jockeys may be employed to fully investigate the matter and implement the following recommendations.

Recommendations

Anti-Slavery urges the Government of the UAE to:

1. Carry out regular unannounced inspections to identify, release and rehabilitate any child who is currently being used as a camel jockey and to repatriate them where appropriate. The Government must ensure that all those responsible for trafficking or employing underage jockeys are prosecuted under existing laws.

2. Introduce legislation that prohibits the employment of children under the age of 18 as camel jockeys and introduce criminal sanctions that will be applied to those who break this law.

3. Provide the Working Group with details of the number of prosecutions brought, the number of successful convictions and the sentences passed by year since 1998 against people who have illegally employed underage camel jockeys.

4. Ratify the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000).

5. Invite an ILO direct contacts mission to the UAE to assist the Government in designing and implementing an action plan to combat the trafficking of children into the UAE for use as camel jockeys and ensure full compliance with ILO Conventions Nos. 29, 138 and 182.