Countering Counter Arguments

Of course, some may choose to contest that the criteria to which I am upholding Arab employers are unfair. They may argue that these criteria are heavily influenced by western cultures and ideals whereas the way in which Arab employers treat their domestic workers stems from an entirely different set of ethical standards. By this logic, it is unreasonable to uphold people to a set of standards that they neither recognise nor accept as (necessarily) true or right. 

However, every country in the GCC (namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, and Bahrain) is a member state of the United Nations. As such, the governments of each country profess to agree with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (written in 1948 – at which point Saudi Arabia was already part of the UN) and so agree to hold them “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” In spite of this, the treatment of migrant domestic workers violates multiple articles of the declaration. The inadequate and sometime unsafe housing violates Article 25. The lack of a proper work environment (and the details by which it is improper) violates Articles 3, 5, 13, 18, 23, and 24. Finally, the way in which employers pay (or withhold payment from) their workers violates Article 23. Because these articles were drawn up by (as well as western countries) nations that are clearly not western (such as Egypt, Nicaragua, and the Philippines), and must be agreed to by any country that wishes to become a member state of the UN, it is fair to hold Arab nations up to these standards. In seeing that the way Arab employers treat their domestic migrant workers is not in accordance with these standards, it is fair to state that what they are doing is ethically wrong.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/