A/HRC/26/35/Add.1 Others reported having signed a contract in their home country which was replaced by a different contract upon arrival in Qatar, with a lower salary and a different job description. As migrants cannot change jobs without the agreement of their sponsor and they often have recruitment loans to pay back, they become highly vulnerable to abuse and less likely to report violations. In many cases, this will amount to trafficking as defined in the Palermo Protocol, since migrants are recruited by means of deception to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation in forced labour. 34. Recruitment fees also contribute to job mismatching, as the hiring is not based on competencies, but rather on the ability to pay the fee. In order to ensure the right person is hired for the job, there should be no fees imposed. While fees are banned in the Labour Law, some migrant-sending countries have legalized recruitment fees for migrants. It was also reported to the Special Rapporteur that recruitment agencies in Qatar sometimes receive kickbacks from recruitment agencies in the sending countries, thereby circumventing the Labour Law. 35. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the system of certification of contracts by the Ministry of Labour before a visa is issued, but these contracts are often not respected by employers upon arrival. Moreover, some migrants are tricked by recruitment agencies and travel to Qatar on a tourist or business visa and then end up working irregularly, unless they can find a sponsor after their arrival. The Special Rapporteur thus believes other procedures are necessary to verify that these contracts are respected in practice and that migrants are empowered to demand that their contracts are enforced. 36. A common practice reported to the Special Rapporteur was the buying and selling of visas, as a result of the “block visa” system. Reportedly, there are companies in Qatar with no employees, which are registered in order to get visas from the Ministry of Labour and then sell these visas to the highest bidder. Such fraud in relation to migrants is part of a pattern of violations of the law that contrast with the immediate and stiff sanctions for violations of the traffic rules, for example. 37. The Special Rapporteur notes the need to formalize the recruitment process, to set up a centralized body for recruitment and to monitor strictly the role of private recruitment agencies and possibly streamline them. He believes it will be important for the Qatari authorities to work together with the migrant-sending countries to ensure that migrants arrive in Qatar debt-free with a clear understanding of their work and living conditions. He also hopes that the authorities will consider some of the issues discussed during the workshop conducted during his visit. In particular, the idea of creating Qatari labour offices in sending countries which would, jointly with local authorities, conduct information campaigns, create ethical rating systems for local recruitment agencies and electronically register contracts, should be explored, either for Qatar alone or together with other member States of the Gulf Cooperation Council. 38. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the information that the Ministry of Labour is in the process of implementing a programme for electronic connection with labour-exporting countries, which will include the establishment of an electronic information base for those seeking jobs in Qatar. This will allow employers to choose their workforce from available applications and might effectively end the discrepancy between the job promised in the sending country and the job effectively occupied in Qatar. The Special Rapporteur hopes that this programme will prevent contract substitutions. C. Bilateral agreements 39. Qatar has signed 31 bilateral agreements with migrant-sending countries. Those agreements include a model employment contract which provides for some regulation of 9