Deference versus diversity in the Gulf

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have long struggled with implementing nationalization employment policies (NEPs) to bring more GCC citizens into the workplace, offset reliance on expatriate labor and diversify their oil-dependent economies. The track record has been mixed — fairly good at getting citizens into the government sector but pretty hopeless at the private sector level. In the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, nationals account for around 80 percent of the public sector workforce, in Kuwait around 90 percent and in Qatar 94 percent, although some of these statistics are questionable. In 2009 for instance, Sheikh Mohammed bin-Rashid, vice presidentof the UAE, admitted that Emiratization levels “did not exceed 54 percent in ministries and 25 percent in federal authorities.” In the private sector, Emiratis account for less than 1 percent of the workforce of the UAE, in Kuwait and Qatar around 5 percent and in Saudi Arabia 13.3 percent,