Human Rights Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 2

Human Rights - Essay Example Research by international human rights organizations have described the worst forms of labor abuse and dehumanization among low income earners like domestic and construction workers in the United Arab Emirates. For example, the worst form of exploitation is the â€Å"Kafala† sponsorship program that gives sponsors and employers authority to determine the immigrants’ legal residence (Chalcraft, 2011). According to Sonnez, Apostolopoulos, Tran & Rentrope (2011), employers are given the authority to control migrant workers pay, living conditions, and ability to renew or terminate their contracts without regard to the country’s labor laws. Another form of human right violation is debt bondage and confiscation of passports because migrant workers have been charged high recruitment fees by their home agencies. Violation comes in because the migrants are promised high salaries but on arrival they wages are too low ranging from $175 to $220 per month. A report by Human Rights Watch (2012) indicates that construction workers live in inhumane conditions, with eight to ten laborers sharing a room because of poverty and debt. For instance, they were expected to work for more than 12 hours per day with very few breaks even under extreme heat of the day (Exploited Workers Building Island of Happiness, 2009). The poor wages and increased cases of abuse thrive because of the political environment which has continuously ignored the need for establishing labor unions and enforcing legal action on abusers. Lack of labor unions limits migrants’ choices, rights to expression, ability to seek justice and freedom to move from one employer to another equating the situation to modern day slavery. These limitations have led to increased cases of suicides among immigrants who find themselves in fixed inhumane environment. A 2009 police report indicated that 113 migrants committed suicide with the most victims coming from domestic and

Can micro-finance schemes solve the problem of rural poverty OR Is Essay

Can micro-finance schemes solve the problem of rural poverty OR Is poverty a sufficient or necessary explanation for child labourArgue in line with reference to strategies totackle child labour - Essay Example In fact persistence poverty can even dampen the prospects of economic growth. The poor stand to benefit when investments are made to ensure better health and education leading to increased current consumption and higher future incomes. To eradicate poverty it is also essential to understand the causes of poverty. Political instability, ill-defined property rights, discrimination on the basis of race, gender and sex, rapidly growing families without sustainable income are some of the causes of rural poverty. Macroeconomic stability and public investment in the physical and social infrastructure are the basic requirements to reduce poverty. However, at the individual level, microfinance was considered by Muhammad Yunus as the way to help the poor start an income that could eventually bring them out of the state of poverty. Microfinance, according to the World Bank, is the ‘provision of financial services’ (including saving and credit) to ‘the poor’ (Irobi, 2008). The purpose of microfinance is to engage the people in economic activities, make them self-reliant, increase employment oppurtunities and enhance their household income and wealth (Emeni, 2008). The basic idea behind starting the microfinance loan scheme for the rural poor was to provide loans to them without collateral security. This was based on trust and selflessness. According to Yunus, people do not seek charity but an oppurtunity to grow and become economically independent. To this extent, the concept of microfinance had a noble purpose the economic growth of the people and thereby the nation. Neo-liberalism is also based on the premise that human welfare can be served best when the state withdrawn from the welfarist policies (Karim, 2009). Neo-liberalism, a social and moral philosophy, has also been described as a way of governance where governing relies on calculative choices and techniques. The subjects have to act in accordance of the