Three years ago I was a newly arrived refugee in the UK, on the verge of losing my largely US-funded job because my US vetting had been held for almost a year without any response.
Vetting is the process of performing a background check on someone to approve paying them, however, the vetting applied by the organisations funded by the American State Department mainly involves checking for any ‘terror’ relations.
With the non-US funding I was receiving coming to a close, and my project due to become funded solely by the US, I was freaking out. I applied for every job I found online, even those I was overqualified for. London expenses, particularly when you are responsible for a kid, are no joke.
The vetting hassle was finally resolved when a friend of mine who works for the State Department interfered and found out that I was in the clear and could get the privileged ‘vetted ID’ needed to keep my job.
As a Syrian, such discriminatory acts are part of my daily life, and they have intensified since the uprising in 2011, which later turned into war.
For example, I am an internationally recognised journalist and human rights defender, yet the British government confiscated my Syrian passport because the Syrian regime reported it stolen. That was just a year before the vetting incident.
I am writing this to tell you that I know how vetting can easily be misused. It is a practice imbued with white superiority and privilege, led by prejudice, that is above all shallow.
I believe we need another kind of vetting for international and the local staff working in the Global South.
Why? This is what I will try to explain.
Human rights vetting
The US and EU vetting systems clear people of any ‘terrorism’ and criminal associations. But they cannot check whether those being vetted have undertaken activities that violate basic human rights, which are sometimes legal in some local communities.
Take the Middle East and North Africa for example, where child marriage, domestic violence, marital rape and sexual harassment are not criminalised in many countries. Your vetted director, who you have employed to lead an educational program, could be married to a 16-year-old girl. A director who has been hired to implement a project on gender-based violence, could be enslaving a trafficked woman from the Philippines or Ethiopia under the Kafala (sponsorship) system.
This system gives private citizens and companies in Jordan, Lebanon, and most Arab Gulf countries almost total control over migrant workers’ employment and immigration status. The lack of regulations and protections for migrant workers’ rights often results in low wages, poor working conditions and abuse.
Justifying not taking an action against a director who married a child or enslaved a trafficked domestic worker on the basis of it being ‘in their private life’ or not ‘directly related to the organisation’ is hypocrisy.