The UAE are meeting with other gulf nations to discuss issues surrounding the formation of trade unions following a number of high profile strikes at construction sites in Dubai that have cast worldwide attention on the plight of labours working in the Emirates. Introduction: The ruthless treatment of migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who constitute 80 per cent of the population and 95 per cent of the workforce, has largely escaped international scrutiny. The writing analyses the failure to protect migrant workers' rights in the UAE from a domestic and an international perspective It outlines the extent of the abuses and demonstrates how the state's weak domestic laws have been further undermined by poor enforcement mechanisms and a lack of political will to address the issue. It examines abuse of international human policies, law and possible avenues of redress, notably those relating to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965, one of only three international human rights treaties that the UAE has ratified. Furthermore, UAE's exploitation of the relative economic weakness that of South Asian neighbours has led to a situation that can be characterised as bonded labour of migrant workers, a form of slavery as defined under international law. It will be concluded that domestic labour provisions in the UAE will never be sufficient to provide basic rights to migrant workers due to the de facto control of the private sector by the public sector. Therefore, concerted international attention and pressure is required to improve a situation in which over two million workers live in terrible conditions, wholly at odds with the wealth and luxury of the country they have helped to build. Exploitation of these workers, ranging from non-payment of wages to physical 1|Page Abuse, is not simply commonplace or widespread, it is systematic. The UAE's labour laws are wholly biased in favor of employers, and the mechanisms used to enforce the laws are ineffective. The government agency in charge, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, has neither the ability nor the willingness to execute its brief. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the government as a whole, far from acting to protect workers, is an active participant in the abuse, profiting directly from a system which keeps a large migrant workforce in conditions of bondage. This system of exploitation is underpinned by the denial of the most basic of labour rights - the right to freely associate and to bargain collectively. The UAE is an ILO member country, but has not signed core ILO Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize and Convention No. 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining. These core Conventions are described as being \"among the founding principles of the ILO\