Slavery in Saudi Arabia

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Legal Chattel slavery existed in Saudi Arabia until the 1960s.

Hejaz (the western region of modern day Saudi Arabia), which encompasses approximately 12% of the total land area of Saudi Arabia, was under the control of the Ottoman Empire from 1517 to 1918, and as such nominally obeyed the Ottoman laws. When the area became an independent nation first as the Kingdom of Hejaz and then as Saudi Arabia, it became internationally known as a slave trade center during the interwar period. After World War II, growing international pressure eventually resulted in the formal abolition of the practice. Slavery was formally abolished in 1962. Many members of the Afro-Saudi minority are descendants of the former slaves.

In contemporary Saudi Arabia, the kafala system, in which foreign workers are tied to a single employer for the duration of their time in Saudi Arabia, and often have their passports confiscated, has been described by human-rights organizations as a form of modern slavery. The labor performed by Kafala workers is similar to labor previously performed by slaves, and the workers often come from similar parts of the world from which slaves were previously imported.