Catherwood LibraryILR School

An economic boom has crammed the United Arab Emirates' seaside with hundreds of shimmering skyscrapers, $1,000-per-night beach hotels and resort islands shaped like palm trees. But the projects have been built on the backs of 600,000 Asian laborers with few rights and little recourse to combat exploitation, says a report issued Sunday by New York-based Human Rights Watch. The country ought to embrace modernity not only in its skylines but in its treatment of construction workers who earn as little as $135 a month in a country where the average monthly wage is $2,100, Human Rights Watch says.