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The Injustice Domestic Workers Face Of The Uae

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Liberty Incarcerated: An Analysis of the Injustice Domestic Workers Face in the UAE
Introduction and Background to Historical Context:
Tahira works approximately 4,000 miles away from home. She is yelled at and beaten on a daily basis but continues to work 15 hours a day because she, like many others, was promised a paycheck when her contract was over. Tahira was not given a bed, and had to resort to sleeping on the ground at night; she was awarded one meal a day, if at all. Still, Tahira did not give up. She needed her salary. The abuse got worse as her employer broke her arm, slapped her across the face and even scraped her fingernails on Tahira’s neck. Still, Tahira endured the pain-she had to. She could not simply go back to Indonesia and find work elsewhere because her ticket back home- her passport was taken away from her (Human Rights Watch 33).
Women employed as Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are being abused psychologically, physically, and sexually by their employers; scholars reference the economic boom of the 1970s as the time period in which migrant labor originated in the UAE. An understanding of the origination of the labor force is critical in understanding why the Expatriate population is so large in the UAE. Kamarava, a professor and director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University, documents the parallel between the economy of the UAE and the growth of migrant workers as a major labor source. The

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