Over the past several weeks, delegates from across the world have convened in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the annual United Nations climate change conference, otherwise known as COP28. Presiding over the annual talks is no small task—host nations are trusted with responsibly stewarding and leading conversations aimed at solving humanity’s most existential threat.
One of the largest issues at COP28 was how to ensure the safety and dignity of what will likely be hundreds of millions of people, if not more, who will become climate migrants. But if the UAE’s own treatment of climate migrants is any indication, this government cannot be trusted to lead the global community in finding climate solutions—on this front or any other.
The UAE’s long and shameful history of human rights abuses has been well-documented. For decades, the nation has ranked among the worst in the world in protecting freedom of expression, women’s and children’s rights and the rights of LGBTQ+ communities. Human rights organizations continue to document pervasive assaults on human rights without accountability or reform from Abu Dhabi, the country’s capital.
Among some of the regime’s worst offenses is its treatment of migrant workers through its kafala system, which leaves the immigration and employment status of migrant workers in the hands of private citizens and corporations. In recent years, there have been reports of confiscated passports keeping migrants trapped in the UAE, and of poor living conditions that sometimes result in injury and death amounting to what many describe as essentially allowing the country to hold people “hostage.”
As the UAE seeks to leverage COP28 to bolster its standing on the international stage, I knew, given my previous work in researching human rights abuses, that it was important to dig deep into the realities of what migrant workers are currently facing. What I found shocked me: the UAE has not only continued to neglect and abuse migrant workers but also abused climate migrants at the site of COP28.
Since earlier this year, my organization Equidem, a global labor and human rights organization, has spoken with more than 100 migrant workers in Dubai, some of whom work at Expo City (the site of COP28) and others who work at sites across the renewables sector, including solar and wind parks. They detailed a series of gross labor rights violations at these locations, including physical abuse, working in extreme heat, inadequate food allowances and wage theft.
And nearly 60 percent of the workers we spoke to told us they were in the UAE due to climate impacts in their home country. One worker from India told us “every year in my area, there is flooding during the rainy season, [so] there is a lot of damage to agriculture and crops. Those doing agriculture work in our area face a lot of difficulties. There is no use in farming. That's why I have come here to work.”
And this is just the beginning. The U.N. predicts that over the next thirty years, 143 million people will likely be forced to move due to climate-related stressors.
This year, the UAE ranked among the top ten for GDP per capita in the world, making it one of the richest countries on the planet (and perhaps ironically, the lion’s share of this wealth can be attributed to its gas and oil production, both of which directly contribute to the climate disasters that displaced so many migrants in the first place).
So it begs the question: If the UAE cannot or will not protect climate migrants, why should the world trust that it will steward a good faith agreement to address all other aspects of climate change? We need trusted leadership to guide the hard discussions and complex problem solving that will be required to combat climate change—and the UAE has shown that it is incapable of doing so.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.