Qatar's death row and the invisible migrant workforce deemed unworthy of due process 19/01/2023, 10:36 In Anil’s case, the embassy in Doha asked for 30,000 Riyals from the Nepali government to pay a lawyer to defend him at the Supreme Court. However, this request was bounced back and forth between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Labour who then sent it to the Foreign Employment Board, wasting precious time. As Neha Choudhary at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Nepal told us, there is also a “disjunct” between the various government institutions in Nepal responsible for labourers working abroad. She said: If there was enhanced coordination between various ministries, particularly the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as all three tiers of government, a lot of the gaps in ensuring rights of migrant workers could be addressed. The Nepali Foreign Employment Board manages a fund of 6 billion rupees (£38 million), to be used for the assistance of migrant workers where required. This fund is financed by the migrant workers themselves, who are required to contribute as a condition of their foreign employment permit from Nepal. Read more: World Cup 2022: what the dream of football success means to migrants Guidelines, which came out in 2021, provide that the Board can spend 1.5 million rupees (around £9,500) to hire a lawyer for a worker detained abroad. However, one of our sources reported to us that the Foreign Employment Board had told them they had helped fewer than four such prisoners in this way in three years. Other NGOs told us that the embassies argue they are understaffed and underfunded as well as poorly coordinated. Deepika Thapaliya, of Equidem, explained that the effectiveness of diplomatic interventions on behalf of the foreign national depended on the “bargaining power” of the foreign government, which many South Asian states do not have in the Gulf because they are so reliant on remittances (payments sent home by migrant workers to support their families in their home states). Nepal, for example, derives a quarter of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from remittances. Similarly, Human Rights Watch and Justice Project Pakistan found that Pakistani migrant workers in Saudi Arabia did not seek consular assistance when faced with criminal charges, “because they did not believe Pakistani officials would offer any assistance, and they did not want to waste limited money on such phone calls”. https://theconversation.com/qatars-death-row-and-the-invisible-migrant-workforce-deemed-unworthy-of-due-process-191017 Page 5 of 12