The Saudi Arabian Obligations under the Palermo Protocol for the Prevention of the Trafficking of Domestic Workers

ABSTRACT
When examining a large flood of migration into a country, an imperative consideration for the affected states is their respect for human rights values, the protection of vulnerable groups and the assurances for the implementation of those values. The case under scrutiny in this thesis is that of domestic workers who are vulnerable due to the nature of their work.
This thesis concentrates on one of the three Ps of human trafficking as outlined in the Palermo Protocol, namely prevention. In particular, the focus lies on two areas relating to the prevention of trafficking of domestic workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). These are, firstly, the disregard of national and international laws preventing trafficking in KSA, and secondly, the limited number of policies that specifically target the prevention of domestic workers trafficking generated in KSA after the issue of laws.
This research into the current circumstances in KSA shows that while anti-trafficking laws, labour laws and domestic workers’ bylaws have been issued, the KSA government has disregarded, partially at least, the implementation of these laws in preventing trafficking. This research shows that the KSA government has not introduced any prevention elements into the anti-trafficking legislation. This is due to the fact that even though the KSA government have used an obfuscated method to implement their first anti-trafficking law, they have misinterpreted the goals that needed to be achieved.
The research also finds three main causes for the limited number of policies in KSA, which may explain why trafficking, is not prevented. These causes are: the lack of interaction between international treaties and KSA departments with regards to human trafficking, inconsistencies between different KSA departments in dealing with human trafficking, and finally, the lack of any policies specifically concerning the prevention of trafficking of domestic workers.