Amnesty International added to growing pressure on Qatar today by slamming the emirate for failing to protect foreign maids and other domestic workers from exploitation.

The human rights charity released a special report alleging that migrant workers face abuse including forced labour, excessively long working hours, verbal harassment and physical and sexual violence.

Its researchers spoke to women who reported working as many as 100 hours per week with no days off and others who were banned from leaving the house altogether.

“Women who find themselves in abusive households face utterly miserable conditions,” said Amnesty global issues director Audrey Gaughran.

Like millions of other migrant workers in the region, their residency in the country is tied to their employers through a sponsorship system that stops workers from easily changing jobs.

“They have few options. If they choose to simply to get out of the house, they will be branded runaways and are likely to end up being detained and deported,” Ms Gaughran continued.

An Opec member and an absolute monarchy dominated by the al-Thani dynasty for a century and a half, Qatar has come under increasing fire over its treatment of foreign workers, particularly those working in the booming construction industry.

But domestic workers are not covered under standard labour law. There are no legal limits to how long they can work or rights to a day off.

At least 84,000 female foreign domestic workers are employed in Qatar, most of them from south and south-east Asia.

An International Labour Organisation report found last year that domestic workers in Qatar work an average of 60 hours a week.

Amnesty itself published a report in November cataloguing human rights abuses there, but researcher James Lynch said that it had decided to issue a separate one on domestic workers because “it is important they are not a footnote to the issues that construction workers face.”

Mr Lynch said that it was vital that Qatar address its shortcomings over workers’ rights, given its regional prominence after winning its bid to stage the 2022 World Cup.