Domestic workers are also considered to be highly vulnerable to forced labor and sexual exploitation because they are largely unprotected under the labor law. In recent years, reports of suicides among migrant workers have been associated with forced labor, debt bondage, and isolation. A Labor Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) study in 2011 found 65 percent of migrant workers had not seen their employment contracts and 89 percent were unaware of their terms of employment. Additionally, the study revealed 70 percent of foreign workers borrowed money or sold property in their home countries to secure their jobs, increasing their vulnerability to debt bondage.Women from Asia, the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European states are subjected to forced prostitution in Bahrain.
The Government of Bahrain does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so.The government continued to investigate, prosecute, and convict sex trafficking offenders in 2014. The government reported its first criminal prosecutions of forced labor offenses involving five suspected labor traffickers in 2014. In addition, it referred 63 labor violations for criminal prosecution, up from zero the previous year; however, among hundreds of reported labor violations in Bahrain, efforts to investigate and prosecute such cases as serious trafficking crimes or identify potential forced labor victims still remained modest.The LMRA assumed oversight of the national anti-trafficking committee and—in an attempt to better monitor the employment of domestic workers and the modest labor law protections for them—took on management of their visa processing.The government also identified an increased number of victims and continued to refer victims to protection services, including those offered at government-run shelters. It launched innovative awareness-raising efforts, including a social media competition for Bahraini youth to encourage respectful treatment of domestic workers among the general population. Nonetheless, potential trafficking victims—particularly domestic workers who ran away from abusive employers—continued to be arrested, detained, and deported for crimes committed as a direct result of being subjected to human trafficking. Despite past commitments and pledges, the government did not abolish the sponsorship system, which contributed greatly to forced labor and debt bondage in the country.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BAHRAIN:
Significantly increase the investigation and prosecution of trafficking offenses—particularly those involving forced labor—including convictions and punishment of trafficking offenders, using the 2008 anti-trafficking law; vigorously investigate cases involving withholding of passports and nonpayment of wages; continue to institute and apply formal procedures to identify victims of trafficking among vulnerable groups, such as domestic workers and women in prostitution; ensure identified victims of trafficking are not punished for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being subjected to trafficking, such as illegal migration or prostitution; institute a formal victim referral mechanism for law

enforcement and other government officials to refer identified victims to protection services; expand labor law protections to include domestic workers and actively enforce them; expand government-run shelters to provide protection services to all victims of trafficking, including victims of forced labor and male victims of trafficking, and ensure that shelter staff receive anti- trafficking training and speak the languages of expatriate workers; amend labor laws to eliminate obstacles to migrant workers’ access to legal recourse for complaints of forced labor; continue to train officials on the anti-trafficking law and victim identification; and continue to publicly raise awareness of trafficking issues in the media and other outlets for foreign migrants, specifically domestic workers, in their native languages.

PROSECUTION
The government made notable progress in its efforts to investigate, prosecute, and convict trafficking offenses. Bahrain’s anti-trafficking law, Law No.1 of 2008, prohibits all forms of trafficking in persons and prescribes penalties ranging from three to 15 years’ imprisonment, which are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with penalties prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. Although withholding a worker’s passport is illegal and carries a financial penalty under a ministerial order, a worker is required to file a complaint with the police, who have no authority to enforce this law and can only refer a complaint to the court if the employer refuses to return the passport. According to NGO sources, employers often claimed a worker’s passport was lost. A Royal Decree enacted in September 2014 expanded authorities’ ability to prosecute Bahraini companies that illegally obtain work permits and aimed to prohibit and penalize the falsification of immigration documents.
The government reported it investigated and prosecuted 21 trafficking cases, involving 51 suspects and 56 victims during the reporting period; according to the public prosecutor, five of these cases involved forced labor offenses and 16 included sex trafficking crimes. Additionally, the public prosecutor pursued 46 cases in which employers had withheld payment. Nonetheless, cases of unpaid or withheld wages, passport retention, and other abuses—common indicators of trafficking—were often still treated as labor violations and taken to labor court where offenders received no punishments unless cases were identified as particularly egregious and referred to the public prosecutor. For example, in 2014, the Ministry of Labor (MOL) closed 600 cases of labor law violations; 377 of these cases involved nonpayment of wages and 223 cases involved passport withholding.The MOL employed nearly 40 safety and health inspectors who carried out visits to work and accommodation sites. When a violation was found, the inspector wrote a report on the violation and arbitrated between the site owner and laborer. If arbitration failed, the MOL could refer the case to the prosecutor for criminal trial; in 2014, the MOL referred 63 out of 427 of these pending labor violations to the prosecutor—a significant improvement from the previous reporting period where none of the cases were investigated under the criminal law as potential forced labor offenses. Most of the cases taken to the labor court involved wage payment delays of one to two months. According to the MOL, embassies could also inspect their nationals’ living situations, and all workers had the right to file complaints with the MOL. In August 2014, authorities detained and investigated the chief inspector at the LMRA for accepting a bribe in exchange for waiving legal action against an Indian restaurant accused of trafficking its employees; prosecutors dropped this prosecution after the victims recanted their testimony

against the employer and acquitted the inspector in January 2015. Bahraini government officials indicated there was a general lack of awareness of trafficking crimes among working-level police.