Freedom HouseOs innovative publication WomenOs Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance analyzes the status of women in the region, with a special focus on the gains and setbacks for womenOs rights since the first edition was released in 2005. The study presents a comparative evaluation of conditions for women in 17 countries and one territory: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (Palestinian Authority and Israeli-Occupied Territories), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The publication identifies the causes and consequences of gender inequality in the Middle East, and provides concrete recommendations for national and international policymakers and implementers. Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights. The project has been embraced as a resource not only by international players like the United Nations and the World Bank, but also by regional womenOs rights organizations, individual activists, scholars, and governments worldwide. WomenOs rights in each country are assessed in five key areas: (1) Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice; (2) Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person; (3) Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity; (4) Political Rights and Civic Voice; and (5) Social and Cultural Rights. The methodology is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the study results are presented through a set of numerical scores and analytical narrative reports.

Why are domestic workers converting to Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf region? In Everyday Conversions Attiya Ahmad presents us with an original analysis of this phenomenon. Using extensive fieldwork conducted among South Asian migrant women in Kuwait, Ahmad argues domestic workers’ Muslim belonging emerges from their work in Kuwaiti households as they develop Islamic piety in relation—but not opposition—to their existing religious practices, family ties, and ethnic and national belonging. Their conversion is less a clean break from their preexisting lives than it is a refashioning in response to their everyday experiences. In examining the connections between migration, labor, gender, and Islam, Ahmad complicates conventional understandings of the dynamics of religious conversion and the feminization of transnational labor migration while proposing the concept of everyday conversion as a way to think more broadly about emergent forms of subjectivity, affinity, and belonging.

In a time when racism is on the rise as a source of conflict and social justice has been increasingly demanded by the civic society, this collection stands as a timely reminder that to ignore the racial factor in the globalization forces is as mistaken as eliminating class analysis. The essays published here supplement the literature of comparative race relations from the standpoint of the theory of institutional racism and its effect on public policies such as immigration, citizenship, security and policing.

For over half a century, the Middle East has been major migration corridor for domestic workers from Asia and Africa. This book Illuminates the multidimensionality of these workers' lives as they engage in finding a balance between acting and being acted upon, struggle and accommodation, and movement and stasis.

At least 146,000 female migrant workers - perhaps many more - are employed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Female domestic workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Ethiopia, and elsewhere face severe abuse and exploitation by employers and labor recruitment agencies. "I Already Bought You" : Abuse and Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates documents how the UAE's visa sponsorship system (known as kafala) ties migrant workers to employers and how the exclusion of domestic workers from labor law protections leaves migrant domestic workers at risk of abuse. The report exposes barriers preventing abused domestic workers from obtaining remedy, including lack of shelters, penalties for "absconding" workers, and justice system failings. Based on interviews with 99 female domestic workers, recruitment agets, employers, and others in the UAE, the report documents abuses that domestic workers face - passport confiscation, non-payment of wages, lack of rest periods and time off, confinement to households, excessive work and working hours, food deprivation, and psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. In some cases the abuses amounted to forced labor or trafficking. The UAE has an increasingly influential role in the international labor arena. In 2014, it joined the governing body of the International Labor Organization. At home, however, it maintains the exploitative kafala system, has failed to adopt a bill pending since 2012 on domestic workers' rights, and has yet to ratify key international treaties on migrants' and domestic workers' rights. Human Rights Watch calls for the reform of the kafala system and the introduction of labor law protections and other measures to fully protect domestic workers' rights. -- back cover.