Today in The Geneva Observer:

Exclusive: Moscow Accuses Swiss Diplomats of “Blackmail,” and Says It Will “Closely Monitor Anti-Russian Tendencies in Switzerland’s Actions as a Host Country for Many UN Organizations”

The Russian Federation’s criticism of Switzerland is not new—it has been a constant feature ever since Bern decided to adopt the EU’s sanctions of Russia following the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the latest attack on the Swiss Government’s policy—and the form it takes—has left some diplomatic observers in Geneva puzzled.

It began with a statement on October 7, 2023, by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova. Asked to comment on the unpublished draft of Swiss Foreign Policy Strategy for 2024-2027, Zakharova answered that the Kremlin considers the document to be “blatantly anti-Russian,” according to a translation provided to The G|O by the Russian Mission in Geneva. “The Swiss authorities,” she continued, “are in favor of ensuring security on the European continent[,] not together with Russia, but apart from it. […] We believe that the Swiss Foreign Policy [Strategy] unambiguously shows that Bern is moving towards the short-sighted policy of the ‘collective West.’”

But the Kremlin chose not to leave it at that: On October 11, posted on the Russian Federation’s Foreign Ministry website, Russian Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Gennady Gatilov offered a “Perspective from Geneva” on “Switzerland’s neutrality:” “Official Bern, although unfortunately, has lost its status of neutral player in the global political arena,” the Geneva-based Ambassador writes, before zooming in on International Geneva and asking, “How has Switzerland’s departure from its long-standing traditions affected International Geneva? Have the stances of this once neutral country and its activities within international organizations changed?” 

The senior Russian diplomat, widely credited with having the ears of both Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, answers his own question by revisiting selected statements made by members of the Swiss Federal Council and Swiss diplomats. In 2002, for instance, when Switzerland joined the UN, Gatilov writes, former Swiss President Kaspar Villiger offered his written assurances to Kofi Annan that the Swiss authorities “are responsible for taking the necessary measures to preserve Switzerland’s neutrality.” But, Gatilov continues, “since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, Switzerland [has been] consistent in joining every EU sanctions package imposed on Russia. In certain cases, it even outshone some of its partners,” the senior diplomat laments—an approach, he claims, that has had a negative impact on the workings of International Geneva.

Besides complaints about deliberations at the UN Security Council over an extension of the cross-border mechanism to deliver humanitarian aid to Syria after the 2023 earthquake, or menial gripes about administrative matters, Gennady Gatilov reserves his most strident criticism for the work of the Swiss diplomats at the Human Rights Council. Russia, the Ambassador writes, was among the initiators and co-authors of the “Business and Human Rights” resolution presented at the Council. But after Switzerland assumed the presidency of the Core Group, Gatilov claims, Swiss diplomats demanded that Russia withdraw from its co-authorship because of a “difficult geo-political situation.” Faced with Russia’s refusal to abandon its co-authorship, “Bern resorted to outright blackmail,” the Russian diplomat asserts, saying “its representatives would not sit at the same table as the Russian delegation,” and eventually announcing their refusal to work on the document. 

Asked by The G|O for its reaction to Ambassador Gatilov’s accusations, the Swiss UN Mission in Geneva told us by email that:

“Switzerland attaches great importance to the ‘Business and Human Rights’ resolution, which should have been presented by a group of countries comprising Argentina, Ghana, the Russian Federation, Switzerland and Thailand.

- Russia's participation in this group met with strong resistance from certain countries.

- We pleaded for Russia not to be excluded from the group, and for a solution acceptable to all to be found.

- In its contacts with the Russian delegation, Switzerland made repeated efforts to find a constructive solution.

- Russia did not accept any of the proposals put forward.

- Switzerland therefore withdrew from the group.

- The resolution was finally presented by Argentina.” 

Why would the Russian Federation decide to renew its criticism of Switzerland at this point? “We do not speculate about the motivations of other states,” the Swiss Foreign Ministry told The G|O in its answer.

Through a spokesperson, the Russian Mission told us that Moscow had decided to conduct a review of changes in Switzerland’s actions in international venues. The conclusion of Ambassador Gatilov’s post contains a vague threat:

“Switzerland’s departure from its neutral policies obviously doesn’t allow Geneva to comprehensively fulfill its functions as one of the UN capitals. We will continue to closely monitor anti-Russian tendencies in Switzerland’s actions as a host country for many UN organizations. If new obstacles arise, we will draw appropriate conclusions. If necessary, we will demand that certain international events be moved to other venues, more acceptable to all participants.”

-PHM

Are Arab Countries Underfunding the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees?

Established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly, the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) has been perennially underfunded, and the war between Israel and Hamas has dramatically exacerbated the situation. Fingers are now increasingly being pointed at Gulf petro-states and the Arab League for not having offered enough support to the Agency, the main provider for Palestinian refugees, over the years.

UNWRA was already underfunded before the most recent conflict began; for 2022, its budget of $1.1 billion was $700 million short of its stated $1.8 billion need. This year, it is only 40% funded. The war is now putting a renewed spotlight on the Arab world and its responsibility for the Agency’s current predicament.

Over the past few years, major potential Arab donors have refrained from fully funding the Agency, while publicly calling attention to the plight of the Palestinian population. In 2022, Saudi Arabia, donating just $27 million, was only the 8^th largest donor to the Agency, and Qatar the 20^th, with $10 million. Kuwait gave $12 million. The budget that year was mainly financed by Western donors, with $342 million coming from the US, $114 million from the EU, and $202 million from Germany alone.

In 2023, up to April, the agency received a total of $431 million. But again, Arab League members made only a modest contribution, with only Jordan ($2 million) and Lebanon ($1 million) making the the top 20. In contrast, the EU sent $87 million, while the Biden administration provided over $53 million to the agency. 

The contribution from the US reflects the fact that it has once again become a large donor, reversing Donald Trump's 2018 decision to defund the Agency—a move which prompted the Arab League chief, Ahmed Aboul Ghent, to claim that the US decision intended “to eradicate the question of refugees.” When Washington cut its funding by $65 million, the Arab countries' support amounted to a quarter of UNWRA’s total budget, a figure that has dropped significantly since. In 2020, without the EU support, UNWRA would have faced de facto bankruptcy.

In May 2023, at the request of the UN Secretary-General, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, attended the Arab League Summit in Jeddah and called on rich Arab states to reinstate or increase their financial support.

“Support to Palestine Refugees is a collective obligation, including from Arab countries,” he said. “Longtime historic partners have decreased their funding in the last few years, dramatically affecting our ability to maintain quality services, including education, health care, and social protection,” he advocated. Two months earlier, he had been to Cairo to meet with Egyptian and Arab League officials to deliver the same message. 

Since October 7, the day of Hamas’s attack on Israel, only Jordan has provided financial support to the agency, donating $4.3 million. “Jordan is one of the first countries to heed the Arab League’s call to provide funding to UNRWA as our Agency struggles with deep financial needs made much worse by the recent escalation in the Gaza Strip,” Lazzarini said in response. “We do hope that other countries around the Arab region follow suit and lend a hand to families in need. The time to turn solidarity into action is now,” he concluded.

Diplomats from Gulf countries told The G|O that UNWRA’s figures do not show the whole picture of Arab support for the Palestinian population. Gulf countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, we were told, use different channels to provide aid to Palestinians. Historical reasons explain the situation: “When UNRWA was set up, following the 1948 War, the question of the Palestinian refugees was considered to be the responsibility of the West,” Riccardo Bocco, Emeritus Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, told me. “But Qatar has almost single-handedly supported Palestinian civil servants for the last 10 years. Doha [also] financed the reconstruction of hospitals following the 2014 Israeli incursion in Gaza.”

-JC

With the World Cup Spotlight Gone, Has Qatar Made Progress on Its Promised Labour Reforms? No, Says a Global Union in a Recent Internal Report; Yes, Says the ILO—Even Calling Them “Radical”

Often, a title captures it all. “Unsustained Reforms, Unprotected Rights,” is the one that Building and Woodworkers’ International (BWI) chose to give to its “assessment of labour reforms and the promise of a decent work legacy in post-World Cup 2022 Qatar.” In a 25-page internal document based on extensive fieldwork in the country, the Global Union Federation (GUF), which for more than a decade has waged a campaign to defend migrant workers’ rights in Qatar, essentially dismisses the Gulf state’s repeated claims that it has significantly altered its labour practices and put in place the mechanisms needed to ensure that changes in its legislation are implemented.

Doha’s “Silence, Passivity, and Disengagement”

While recognizing some incremental progress, BWI’s report, obtained by The Geneva Observer, concludes that “the fieldwork data indicate that the Qatari government’s behaviour following the World Cup is characterized by silence, passivity, and disengagement. In fact, for BWI, “the Qatari government’s domestic labour reforms appear to have had only a temporary effect on the lives of migrant workers.” BWI’s report highlights continued abuses of migrant workers due to a lack of oversight and control of companies operating in the country. For BWI, it is clear “that those who perpetrate these abuses benefit greatly from them. It is critical to diminish or remove the economic incentive from those empowered to benefit from the injustice inflicted on those unable to protect themselves.”

According to the ILO, the kafala system was supposed to be a thing of the past; but BWI’s research indicates otherwise. Focusing on the role of the private sector is essential in understanding the notorious “kafala” sponsorship system, the cornerstone of the regulation of migration to the country. The latest academic research defines the “kafala” as “an institutionalized intermediation between locals and foreigners, establishing a relation of protection, dependence, exploitation, and hierarchy within and beyond that established by the labour market.” Thus, experts explain, the absence of clear legal provisions “enables companies to apply their own principles.” “The law,” the researchers continue, “is not absent from their relationship, but recourse to the law is entirely at the sponsors’ discretion”—a situation, BWI says, that has been repeatedly confirmed by its own study and is of particular importance given the role that recruitment agencies play within the kafala system.

Continuous Widespread Violations

Under increasing pressure from human and labour rights defenders and the International Labour Organization (ILO) following its successful bid for the 2022 World Cup, Qatar was said by the ILO and labour groups to have engaged in a series of “major” reforms to its labour laws. The ILO Committee of Experts that supervises the application of standards claimed, in a report published only a few months before the World Cup, that “a historical breakthrough” had taken place “through the enactment of the abolition of the sponsorship system.” Changes were said to have formally dismantled the legal foundations of the kafala system in 2019, abolishing the requirement that migrant workers obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to change jobs, and ensuring that wages be paid through an electronic system meant to prevent wage theft.

The ILO’s findings were generally shared by global labour unions. At a FIFA meeting held in May 2021, both the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and BWI “stressed the importance of the ongoing reform process.” According to the meeting’s minutes, Ambet Yuson, BWI’s General Secretary, praised the reforms, saying that “based on the findings of the inspections BWI has been conducting on FIFA World Cup sites […] health & safety standards on these sites are at the level of standards in Western Europe and North America.”

The new BWI report contrasts with earlier findings. According to the document, “overall, the Qatari government’s domestic and international responses to the labour reforms have demonstrated its capacity to change laws, if not its political will to implement them so as to comply with international norms and standards on the rights of migrant workers in the country. Despite these significant enhancements at both the public policy and enforcement levels, companies continued to engage in widespread violations of the new laws and framework. Unfortunately, removing the legal structure that supported the kafala system does not, by itself, create decent work, prevent bonded and forced labour, or protect the rights of workers to form and join worker organizations of their own choosing.” The report concludes that the “NOC system is still alive and well. Wage theft continues. Given the initial costs and high-interest rates—in some cases as high as 28%—charged by recruitment entities, wage theft rapidly turns into forced labour for many migrants. They are not paid enough to cover their debt so they cannot leave, yet they cannot earn enough to break this cycle as long as an employer-dominated system prevails in the country.”

Qatar’s effort was “impressive in theory, but it mattered little in practice—especially after the World Cup ended,” concurs Christina Bouri, a Middle East research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, in a recent working note, adding that “the contracts used to hire foreign laborers in many Middle Eastern countries are routinely violated and give workers few options to redress exploitative or abusive behavior.”

A Focus on Decent Work

Beyond the inventory of what it defines as the “unsustained reforms” and “unprotected rights” of its title, BWI’s report shifts the focus to the larger picture: to this day, Qatar hasn’t ratified two of the most important of the ILO’s so-called “fundamental” Conventions, C87 and C98, on the “Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention” and the “Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention.” “The BWI campaign to inform the world of [migrant workers’ plight] will not stop until freedom of association, the right to organise, and the right to collective bargaining are recognised. After all, if you are not able to speak freely with co-workers on the job site, can you consider yourself free? If your visa and passport are held by your employer, can you consider yourself free? If you are disadvantaged and subject to mistreatment because you cannot read or write, or do not speak the employer’s language, can you consider yourself free?” asks BWI’s General-Secretary in his foreword to its study.

For some ILO watchers, there has been a shift in focus from eradicating the kafala system to improving working conditions that constitute decent work, which may reflect the inability of the ILO to push for reforms. Some sources say that BWI may have concluded that the interests of its members are no longer sufficiently served by the ILO under the technical cooperation agreement it signed with Doha in 2018. (Discussions for a four-year extension are at an advanced stage, the ILO says.) Is there a risk, then, despite its agreement with Doha, of the ILO being marginalized, as Global Union Federations seem to have decided to engage more directly with governments? It's a path bound to raise questions within the labour movement itself, after the revelation of “Qatargate,” Qatar’s alleged bribery of the then Secretary-General of the International Trade Union Confederation, now removed from his position, and of members of the European Parliament.

Repeated requests made to BWI to discuss the questions raised by its report and its broader meaning have remained unanswered. Our requests for comment from the ITUC and from Qatar’s Ministry of Labor have also so far been unsuccessful.

The ILO, meanwhile, notwithstanding BWI’s critical report, stands by its assessment of the situation. While visiting the country in September, Gilbert Houngbo called Doha’s labour law reforms “radical,” making Qatar “a role model in the field of migrant workers’ rights,” according to the official website of the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Meets ILO Director-General

Mada and Qatar Digital Government Logos

Asked by The G|O to outline in detail the “radical” nature of Qatar’s reforms and what exactly makes the country “a role model,” the ILO responded by email with the following:

“The reforms are indeed significant, compared to the situation of five years ago. Some of the changes are ‘firsts’ [for] the region, for example the research and legislation around the impact of heat stress on workers’ health. […]

While a lot has been achieved, there is a universal recognition that there are gaps in terms of the implementation of the labour reforms. Like everyone, the ILO is impatient to see a more effective implementation of the labour reforms—but we also recognize that building institutions and changing mindsets takes time, and progress is gradual.

In the past five years, we’ve seen major developments in terms of new laws and policies, of the role of institutions to ensure the effective enforcement of these laws and policies, and increased partnerships and engagement with different stakeholders across the world of work, including international unions and NGOs. […]

This experience from Qatar has been shared with many countries in the past year, including in the Arab Region and Europe.”

The gap between the ILO’s assessment of the situation for migrant workers in Qatar, and that of BWI and some NGOs, appears to be growing.

 -PHM

(For the sake of transparency, the ILO in extenso response can be downloaded below.)

Today's Briefing: Philippe Mottaz- Jamil Chade

Editorial assistance: David Jenny

Edited by: Dan Wheeler