Slavery in the Trucial States

Slavery and slave trade had been an issue of tension between Britain and the Gulf states since the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1833. While the British abolition of slavery never applied in the Trucial States because they were never colonies, the British fleet did oppose the Indian Ocean slave trade and prevented slave ships from Zanzibar to reach their destination in the Gulf. Hajj A second route of slave trade existed, with people from both Africa and East Asia, who were smuggled to Jeddah in the Arabian Peninsula in connection to the Muslim pilgrimage, Hajj, to Mecca and Medina. These slaves were imported from the Hejaz to Oman, the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Victims were tricked to perform the journey willingly in the belief that they were going on the Hajj pilgrimage or employed as servants and then sold upon arrival. The method of kidnapping was also used. India In 1927, a trial revealed a slave trade organization in which Indian children of both sexes were trafficked to Oman and Dubai via Persia and Gwadar. Baluchistan In the 1940s, a third slave trade route was noted, in which Balochis from Balochistan were shipped across the Persian Gulf, many of whom had sold themselves or their children to escape poverty. When the British patrolling against slave ships on sea became more effective against the Red Sea slave trade and the Indian Ocean slave trade, slaves started to be imported by aircraft. The first major achievement of the Levies was the cessation of both the Buraimi slave trade into Saudi Arabia and abductions into slavery, especially in the area of the Buraimi Oasis, and by the end of 1951 this trade had reportedly ceased. In practice, however, these people were trafficked from Buraimi to the slave markets in Saudi Arabia until the air flight slave trade was banned by Prince Feisal in 1962. Function and conditions Slaves were given a new name on arrival. Men's names symbolized affluence and power, and women were given vibrant names that conveyed femininity. They gradually integrated in to the local culture, gradually forgetting their past; freed slaves normally by culture stayed in the household or in a clientship of their former owners. Male slaves Male slaves where used in a number of tasks: as soldiers, pearl divers, farm labourers, cash crop workers, maritime sailors, dock workers, porters, irrigation canal workers, fishermen, and domestic servants. Female domestic slaves lived a hard life and reproduction among slaves was low; it was noted that the infant mortality was high among slaves, and that female slaves were often raped in their childhood and rarely lived in their forties, and that poorer slave owners often prostituted them. Female slaves were also given as gifts between rulers: in November 1948, for example, the ruler of Dubai gifted a number of female slaves to king Ibn Saud and his sons, receiving in return a car and 10,000 ryals. ==Activism against slave trade==

1892–1950 The British Empire, having signed the 1926 Slavery Convention as a member of the League of Nations, was obliged to fight slavery and the slave trade in all land under the direct or indirect control of the British Empire. Since the Trucial States were informally a British protectorate, the British were expected by the League of Nations to enforce this policy in the region. Officially, the British declared that they did just that, but in reality, the slavery and slave trade in the Trucial States were tolerated by the British. As was the case with the rest of the Gulf states, the British considered their control over the region insufficient to do much about slavery and the slave trade. The British India Office advised the British authorities that any attempts to enforce an anti-slavery treaty in the region could cause economic and political unrest, since slavery was "deeply rooted in religious and political history". 1950–1970 After World War II, there was a growing international pressure from the United Nations to end the slave trade. After the Independence of India in 1947, the British Foreign Office secured direct control over the Trucial States and for the first time considered itself to have sufficient control to enforce the laws against slavery and slave trade, particularly since a bigger international presence in the Gulf States attracted more attention to the slavery, and a stronger international condemnation against it. In 1948, the United Nations declared slavery to be a crime against humanity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, after which the Anti-Slavery Society pointed out that there were about one million slaves in the Arabian Peninsula, which was a crime against the 1926 Slavery Convention, and demanded that the UN form a committee to handle the issue. The UN formed the Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery in 1950, which resulted in the introduction of the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery. The Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery filed a report on the chattel slavery in the Trucial States during the 1950-1951 investigation. In 1951 the British founded the Trucial Oman Levies or Trucial Oman Scouts in Sharjah to fight the slave trade. When slavery in Qatar was abolished in 1952 the British asked the Trucial Council assembly of Trucial rulers to follow their example and abolish slavery, but they refused, stating that slavery was legal in Islam, and that they lacked the funds to pay compensation to slave owners. The 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention differed between "non-self-governing territories" and "other non-metropolitan territories" such as the Persian Gulf states, and the British stated that the Convention did not apply to the Trucial states, but encouraged the Trucial rulers to abolish slavery and apply the Convention voluntarily. In 1957 the British pressured the Gulf rulers to accept the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention in accordance with the Colonial Application; this was accepted by Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, but the rulers of the Trucial States stated that such a law could not be enforced. When the Trucial rulers did accept the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention, they did not follow it up with issuing the necessary edicts, and the British regarded the issue as too sensitive to pressure them to do so. In 1958 the British Political Agent in Dubai Peter Tripp urged the Trucial rulers to issue a decree, ''a'lan'', to prohibit slavery and fulfil the obligations of the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention. The Trucial rulers claimed that slavery was already defunct but that they would issue such a decree if the British government wished them to. In 1963, the British Political Resident Sir William Luce reported that the Trucial rulers had finally signed an agreement to issue a decree to follow the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention; they claimed that they had indeed issued such a decree, but the British could find no evidence to confirm that such a decree had ever been issued. ==After independence: the United Arab Emirates==

On 2 December 1971 the Trucial States became independent under the new name United Arab Emirates and was accepted as a member of the United Nations. As such, they also accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibiting slavery, however this carried no obligations to follow the Declaration, and there was a lack of clarity as to whether slavery was actually illegal in the Emirates. Modern slavery In the United Arab Emirates, the labor previously performed by slaves were now performed by poor migrant workers employed under the Kafala system, which has been compared to slavery. The Kafala laborers often came from Africa and Asia, just as the majority of the former slaves. Another form of modern slavery came in the form of human trafficking for sexual exploitation. When the Soviet Union broke up, thousands of Eastern European women become prostitutes in China, Western Europe, Israel, and Turkey every year. There are tens of thousands of women from Eastern Europe and Asia working as prostitutes in Dubai. Men from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates form a large proportion of the customers. The former slave concubines, who were often white women from Eastern Europe, came to be replaced by the victims of human trafficking, often from Eastern Europe, which was a common origin for the previous slave concubines. Kafala system The United Arab Emirates has a work visa sponsorship system to issue work permits for foreign nationals who wish to migrate for work in the UAE. Most of the visas are sponsored by institutions and companies. A person looking to enter the UAE for work obtains a work permit, valid for two months, from the Ministry of Human Resources. The sponsor is responsible for medical testing and obtaining identity cards, documents and stamps. The employee can then sponsor his or her family members and bring them into the UAE. By Article 1 of Ministerial Decree No. 766 of 2015, an employee whose contract expires can obtain a new permit and may remain in the UAE on a 6-month job seeker visa. A new work permit is also issued if the employer fails legal and contractual obligations such as not paying wages for 60 days. A worker may request his contract to be terminated after at least 6 months of employment. A worker whose employment is terminated unfairly has the right to receive a new work permit without the six-month condition. In the United Arab Emirates, the kafala system was part of the 1980 Federal Law on the Regulation of Labour Relations, which regulated the relationship between the state, the sponsor and the sponsored. The law did not require any written contract to be drawn up between the employer and the migrant worker. The changes also specify working hours as 8 hours per day or 48 hours per week. Alien widows or divorced women whose legal presence in the country was sponsored by their husband's work status are given a 1-year visa to stay in the country without the need for a work permit or a sponsor. ==See also==