Even as a fragile ceasefire holds between Israel and Iran, the risk of renewed conflict in the Middle East continues to cast a long shadow over millions of South Asian migrant workers. With Israel and Iran trading airstrikes, closed airspace and warnings over aggressive posturing at an advanced stage, the prospects for a wider regional war are dangerously genuine. As the world awaits the next movement or diplomatic ripple, the fate of millions of South Asian migrants working across the region hangs in a quiet lurch.
For more than five decades, countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka have supplied the manpower that fuels the Gulf economy. From construction workers and drivers to domestic help and hotel staff, these migrants perform the jobs that keep the cities in the Gulf running. In return, they send home billions of dollars in remittances each year, money that feeds families and fuels local economies throughout South Asia.
But when conflict breaks out — as it has before and will again — these workers are among the first to pay the price. Now they are abruptly forced to leave, with no compensation or warning, leaving to go back to homes in debt, scarred with trauma and unsure how they will survive themselves.
The 1990 Gulf War was an alarm bell. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait uprooted about 1.7 million expatriates. Tens of thousands of South Asians, among them more than 170,000 Indians and 64,000 Bangladeshis, were evacuated. Many had borrowed to finance their migration, and their sudden return left entire families teetering on the edge of financial ruin. Bangladesh alone experienced remittance losses of more than $500 million that year.
Every subsequent major Middle Eastern conflict has followed suit since then. Huge migrant evacuations were caused by the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, and Libya’s plunge into civil war in 2011. More than 35,000 Bangladeshis and 18,000 Indians scrambled to escape from Libya. More than half of the Bangladeshi workers who did return one year later were still unemployed, according to the International Organization for Migration. Various were unable to meet the debts they had contracted in going abroad.
The war in Yemen in 2015 was a case in point. Vast numbers of South Asians had to be airlifted out of the country. Many had spent years living and working there, with nothing to show for it upon their return.
The cycle repeats, and the stakes grow ever higher. Middle Eastern wars are not only about individual lives for South Asian nations. It affects national economies. Migrant workers are a lifeline, quite literally, for many economies: Remittances from migrant labor are key to Bangladesh (more than $20 billion annually) and account for nearly a quarter of Nepal’s G.D.P. When those flows are stymied, the economic pain is felt far and wide — and is especially pronounced in rural districts disproportionately dependent on money sent from overseas.
After the Libya war was over, Bangladesh Bank has observed a marked decline of rural consumption activities in migrant-prone districts. This demonstrates how inelastic remittance income is to household subsistence and local commerce. When a worker is returned from overseas early, the repercussions ricochet through the community, with lost wages, higher rates of loan defaults and lenders seizing assets, and an uptick in poverty.
Knowing this history, South Asia is broadly unprepared for the next crisis. Reactive evacuations can get people out of harm’s way, but they often don’t stick around for a solution to take root. There is little structured reintegration. Workers come back to communities without employment opportunities, retraining programs, or access to mental health care. Far too often their expertise and skill is squandered, and their potential contribution to the economy remains unrealised.
This forward planning, both regional and international, is long overdue. Instead of waiting for war to come, it is time that South Asian countries gird up for a joint move. This should include establishing regional cooperation on emergency repatriation, strengthening labor agreements with host countries and making sure that employees who return home are guaranteed a means to re-enter home markets.
While labour migration agreements between South Asia Guld countries should also include provisions and commitments to emergency evacuation for settlement of unpaid wages, and obtaining essential travel papers during conflict.
These should not be considered as optional extras, but the basics of protection for millions of workers who drive the economies of their sending and receiving states.
And in the broader world, there is room — and a pressing need — for South Asian countries to advocate more strongly. One possibility is a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly demanding that countries recognize the rights and provide for the protection of migrant workers in conflict zones. In diplomatic circles, they talk about the possibility of a binding “Migrant Safety Protocol.” Such an agreement would hold host countries responsible to provide for the safe return, documentation, and compensation of migrant workers during a crisis.
South Asia must also find its voice in the Global South. Representative From the South: The Value of a South-South Response Both South-South entities, like the Non-Aligned Movement, can reaffirm the significance of globally equitable protections. These venues could help to re-introduce (and if passed, to implement) serious but long-ignored proposals, like a Middle East Nuclear-Free Zone, which would remove one of the central generators of regional instability.
The human suffering from every war is profound, but for South Asia the cost is addled. Millions depend on migration for economic survival. But migrant workers are still the stepchildren of the international policymaking family, left to be cheapened by systems that depend on their labors but do little to safeguard their rights.
The crisis unfolding in 2024 and 2025 must be a turning point. As airspace restrictions widen and embassies in the region brace for worst-case scenarios, South Asian governments need to act swiftly and collectively. Quiet diplomacy with host nations, early-warning coordination between consular offices, and the establishment of shared emergency response frameworks are all critical steps that should no longer be delayed.
Migrant workers are not mere economic agents. They are individuals with families, histories, and futures. They deserve to be protected not just as a matter of humanitarian obligation, but as a recognition of their contribution to both their home countries and the places they help build abroad.
When bombs fall in the Middle East, the tremors reach deep into the heart of South Asia. It’s time for the region to ensure those tremors don’t become recurring disasters for its people—and to demand that the world finally hears their quiet suffering.
Migrant workers are not just cogs in the economic machine. They are people with families and pasts and potential futures. They deserve protection not only as a humanitarian duty, but as a recognition of what they give both their home countries and the places they help to create abroad.
When the bombs fall in the Middle East, the shock waves travel deep into the heart of South Asia. Now it’s time for the region to spare the world the specter of those tremors turning into recurrent disasters for its people — and to insist that the world finally listen to their quiet suffering.