A/HRC/15/20* 49. Restrictions of domestic workers’ human rights to freedom of movement and residence can also be indicators for dependency. In some cases, domestic workers are forced to live with their employers and locked into the house virtually 24 hours a day. This is not only a violation, but also means that they are isolated, unable to report exploitation to the authorities and incapable of obtaining support from peers, friends or labour union representatives. 50. Economic and social human rights abuses, for instance, the threat of withholding food, water or essential medical care where the worker depends on the employer for these goods, can also place the victim in a position where she has no choice but to submit to exploitation. 51. Physical and psychological abuses reinforce dependency and, in extreme cases, become the very cause of domestic servitude (rather than a mere consequence). A domestic worker may, for instance, be subjected to abuse so severe that a psychological dependency on the perpetrator ensues (a phenomenon known as the “battered women syndrome” in the domestic violence context). The victim may be systematically beaten, insulted, humiliated and belittled to force her to submit to excessive working hours, unpaid overtime on rest days, etc.. Such abuse can reinforce other patterns of learned submission based on caste, ethnic or gender discrimination. Sexual violence, ranging from sexual harassment to repeated rape or the threat of trafficking into forced prostitution, is also employed as a tool of subjugation.22 The Special Rapporteur also received numerous reports of domestic workers being threatened with denunciation for crimes they did not commit if they complained about exploitative working conditions. 52. In a number of countries, the authorities become involuntary accomplices to exploitation and servitude by allowing, or even requiring, employers to restrict the freedom of movement and residence of migrant domestic workers or systematically failing to enforce relevant prohibitions. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, noted that, contrary to an official Government decision, migrants systematically had their passports and residency permits taken away from them, causing some to end up in slave-like conditions.23 Jordanian legislation on domestic workers, despite being very progressive in other respects, still requires migrant domestic workers to live with their employer and seek his permission to leave the home – even during their time off.24 6. Migrants and domestic servitude 53. Migration provides an avenue for women from developing countries to find employment abroad and sustain their families. However, a sizable minority of women who emigrate in search of domestic work ends up in domestic servitude. 54. Migrant domestic workers commonly have a particularly precarious residence status, making them dependent on their employer and hence easy to exploit. A number of countries in Asia and the Middle East (where the system is known as kafalah) still tie a domestic worker’s visa to a particular family. The domestic worker is only allowed to change visa sponsors without the employers’ consent in exceptional circumstances that are, in practice, hard to invoke. A live-in worker who is dismissed can find herself from one moment to the 22 23 24 GE.10-15169 Human Rights Watch, Swept under the rug: Abuses against Domestic Workers Around the World (2006), p. 17. Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, mission to Saudi Arabia, A/HRC/11/6/Add.3, para. 57. Human Rights Watch, Slow Reform: Protection of Migrant Domestic Workers in Asia and the Middle East (2010), pp. 3–4. 11