Saudi Arabia – A landmark ruling by Britain’s highest court in favor of a Filipino domestic worker who alleges she was trafficked and treated like a slave by a Saudi diplomat could pave the way for other victims to seek justice, activists said on Wednesday. Cherrylyn Reyes went to an employment tribunal in 2011, claiming her former employers, Jarallah Al-Malki and his wife, had subjected her to racial abuse, taken her passport, and paid less than the minimum wage. The tribunal and the Court of Appeal refused to hear her claims because her employers had diplomatic immunity in Britain, which meant they could not be tried. Yet Britain’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the employment tribunal should hear Reyes’ allegations of abuse as Al-Malki no longer had full diplomatic immunity after finishing his posting and leaving Britain in 2014. “I know there are lots of other domestic workers who have suffered like me,” Reyes said in a statement. “I am delighted that they will be able to use this case to get redress.” The allegations have not yet been examined, as the hearings so far have focused on whether the couple could claim immunity. It the Supreme Court’s first ruling on a case involving a domestic worker, said Kalayaan, a charity campaigning to improve migrant domestic workers’ rights. “(This) represents a significant inroad into chipping away at the veil of immunity that has so far shielded diplomats who have trafficked their domestic workers,” said Zubier Yazdani, a solicitor who represented Kalayaan and Reyes in the court case. Former diplomats are granted limited residual immunity, yet the Supreme Court said this did not apply to Al-Malki as his employment of Reyes fell outside his “official functions”. At least 17,000 domestic workers are brought to Britain each year, with many of them potentially trafficked, charities say. Many are exploited by employers who lock them up, beat and abuse them and withhold their pay, yet find it hard to escape since Britain imposed visa rules in 2012 that tie them to their employer – in an attempt to limit immigration – critics say. Foreign domestic workers are usually required to perform a range of tasks, including cleaning, cooking, childcare and washing. Male domestic workers are often brought to Britain to work as drivers, cooks, and private security guards. Domestic workers come mostly from Africa and Asia – particularly from the Philippines – along with India and Indonesia. But the vast majority of workers enter Britain from a country that is not their home country, especially Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the UAE. Many of these workers, including the two women who filed the case on Wednesday (October 18th), work under the sponsor system, which spreads in the Gulf region. The sponsor system legally links migrant workers to their employers so that workers are not allowed to leave their jobs or leave the country without the employers permission.
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