Key Terms & Concepts — UPSC Mains
Kafala System
"A sponsorship-based migrant labour system, historically used across the Gulf Cooperation Council states, that legally ties a foreign worker's residency and employment status to a specific sponsoring employer."
The kafala (Arabic for 'sponsorship') system is a legal framework historically employed across the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, under which a migrant worker's legal right to reside and work in the country is tied to a specific sponsoring employer, who typically controlled the worker's ability to change jobs, and in its strictest form, to exit the country. This structure gave employers substantial leverage over workers, since a worker who wished to leave an abusive or exploitative employer risked losing legal status altogether, and it has been widely criticised by international labour and human-rights bodies as facilitating exploitation, wage theft and forced labour. Reform has proceeded unevenly across the six states rather than as a coordinated regional shift. Qatar has gone furthest, abolishing the exit permit for most workers under Law 13 of 2018 (extended to domestic workers in 2020), removing the no-objection certificate requirement under Law 18 of 2020 so workers can change employers before contract end, and introducing the region's only non-discriminatory statutory minimum wage under Law 17 of 2020. The UAE permits employer transfer after six months under Federal Decree-Law 33 of 2021, and Bahrain moved earliest, making a labour-market regulatory authority rather than the employer the visa sponsor as early as 2009. Reform has also reversed in places, complicating any simple narrative of regional progress. Kuwait re-imposed exit-permit requirements for private-sector migrant workers from July 2025, and Bahrain withdrew its most radical anti-kafala measure, the Flexi-Permit allowing irregular-status migrants to self-sponsor, cancelling it in October 2022. Structural gaps also persist across the region: domestic workers remain excluded from the main labour law in all six GCC states, governed instead by weaker separate instruments, and no GCC state has ratified ILO Convention 189 on domestic workers or Convention 190 on violence and harassment.
A GS2 concept central to India's diaspora and labour-migration policy, since a large share of India's approximately 9 million Gulf-based workers are or were governed by kafala-derived employment structures; frequently tested alongside remittance flows and worker welfare mechanisms.
- 1 Kafala: a sponsorship system tying a migrant worker's legal status and employment to a specific employer, historically across all six GCC states.
- 2 In its strictest form required employer permission (exit permit) even to leave the country, and a no-objection certificate to change employers.
- 3 Widely criticised by international labour/human-rights bodies for facilitating exploitation and forced labour.
- 4 Qatar has reformed furthest: abolished the exit permit (2018/2020), removed the no-objection certificate (2020), introduced a non-discriminatory minimum wage (2020, Law 17).
- 5 UAE permits employer transfer after six months (2021); Bahrain made a regulatory authority the visa sponsor as early as 2009.
- 6 Reform has reversed in places: Kuwait re-imposed exit permits (2025); Bahrain cancelled its self-sponsorship Flexi-Permit (2022).
- 7 Domestic workers remain excluded from the main labour law in all six GCC states; no GCC state has ratified ILO Conventions 189 or 190.
- 8 India's Emigration Act, 1983 and eMigrate platform are the principal domestic instruments regulating worker departure to kafala-system destinations.
A Gulf-based Indian construction worker's inability to change employer or leave the country without employer consent, under the kafala system before Qatar's 2018-2020 reforms, was cited as removing the exit option that safety regimes depend on workers being able to exercise.
