"Domestic help are treated like chattel, they work long hours, they are beaten,
detained, sexually harassed and sometimes raped."
It said it received 116 individual and 15 group complaints last year.
Like other Gulf Arab states, gas-rich Qatar has experienced phenomenal wealth
in recent years from rising energy prices and is spending billions of dollars
on building new infrastructure and skyscrapers, requiring the import of more
and more labourers from Asia, mainly India and Pakistan.
Gulf states have for years depended on the migrant Asian workforce to do
everything from working on oil rigs, sweeping streets, serving food and
cleaning homes, with the more educated virtually running the services sector.
The plight of labourers is not unique to Qatar.
Booming Dubai saw violent protests by construction workers last week and in
March over wages and living conditions, amid reports that authorities have
deported those labelled as troublemakers.
The Qatari committee said the hardship faced by labourers stem from an
inflexible sponsorship system under which employers hold the passports of their
employees, the delays in getting paid and unsuitable living conditions.
It has called on the government to revise all laws concerning expatriate
workers.
The committee, which was established three years ago, has 15 members, of whom
eight are government representatives.
Qatar, a peninsula located half-way along the Gulf's west coast, has a
population of 750,000, of whom only 150,000 are nationals.
In its strongly worded report, the committee also spoke of a rising sex trade
in conservative Qatar, which applies a hardline interpretation of Islam similar
to but less stringent in some areas than neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
"Women are brought to the country under the guise of aiding them and then they
are taken advantage of for prostitution and other indecent acts or they are
hired jobs in hotels and coffee shops as a coverup for prostitution," the
report said.
It also said many female housekeepers are sometimes lured into prostitution
because they find themselves stranded in the country when their work permits
expire and they fail to find new jobs.
The report had harsh words for the plight of women in general in Qatar's
male-dominated society and urged the government to sign up to international
treaties which forbid discrimination.
It said women get paid less for the same job carried out by men, they cannot
get travel or personal identification documents without the consent of their
male guardians, they are thrown into financial hardship in cases of divorce and
cannot pass on citizenship to their children if they marry foreigners.
The report made no mention of the case of Hamda Fahd bin Jassem al-Thani, a
member of the ruling family, who has been detained by her family in Qatar for
almost three years for fleeing to Cairo to marry an Egyptian without their
consent.
She was held in prison for a year before that after she was abducted in Cairo
by Qatari security officers.
London-based rights group Amnesty International, which wrote last year to
Qatar's emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani about Hamda, plans to submit the
case to the UN's Committee against Torture.
Marriage like other personal and family affairs in Gulf societies is governed
by sharia (Islamic law) and is usually arranged by parents, with many women
denied the right to choose their partner.
