How Many Pakistani Bodies Are Repatriated From Saudi Arabia Each Year?

The 25,000-a-year figure, where it comes from, and what the death certificates do not say

Pakistan repatriates around 25,000 bodies a year from the Gulf states, with Saudi Arabia accounting for the largest single share. Most are men in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who left Pakistan healthy and young.

This piece sits inside the Human Cost of Pakistan's Brain Drain cluster, under the broader Pakistan Brain Drain: The Graveyard of Remittancers pillar.

The headline figure

Researchers and Pakistani diaspora organisations consistently cite the figure of approximately 25,000 Pakistani bodies repatriated from Gulf states each year. Saudi Arabia, which holds ~2.64 million Pakistani workers, accounts for the largest single share. The UAE (~950,000+ Pakistani workers), Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain account for the rest.

That works out to roughly 70 bodies a day, 500 a week, 2,000 a month. Steady enough that PIA, Saudia, Emirates, and Qatar Airways treat it as recurring cargo logistics.

What the Guardian found in Qatar alone

Between 2010 and 2020, more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka died in Qatar alone, according to a 2021 Guardian investigation that used embassy data. That is roughly 12 South Asian workers dying every week, in a single Gulf state, for a decade.

Pakistan's share of those Qatar deaths runs into the hundreds. And Qatar holds a much smaller Pakistani population than Saudi Arabia or the UAE.

"Natural causes" is doing the work

Most of the deaths are recorded as "natural causes" or "cardiac arrest." The Guardian's investigation specifically flagged this language as concealing heat-stroke deaths from working in 50°C summers without water breaks.

A 28-year-old Pakistani electrician who collapses on a Riyadh construction site at 1pm in July is not dying of natural causes. He is dying of preventable industrial conditions. The death certificate says "cardiac." The labour inspectorate signs off. The body goes home.

This matters because under most Gulf labour systems, "natural causes" deaths do not trigger compensation, do not require employer accountability, and do not generate any pressure on the kafala system that produced the death.

Pakistan is the graveyard of the remittancers. The country that exhausted them in life finally welcomes them back. In a coffin.

The repatriation cost the family pays

In many cases, the cost of repatriating the body falls on the dead worker's family in Pakistan:

• Bodies sit in Gulf morgues for weeks while families scramble to raise funds
• Some employers refuse to release wages owed to the deceased, holding them as leverage
• Pakistan's embassies often do not cover repatriation costs as a default service
• Indian and Filipino embassies have stronger systems through Indian Community Welfare Fund and OWWA

I have written the comparison at Why Pakistan's Embassies Fail Their Own Workers.

What the bodies tell us about the system

The 25,000-a-year figure is one of the cleanest indictments of the kafala-based labour-export model. These are mostly young men. They are not dying of old age. They are dying of work conditions, accidents, untreated illness, and mental health crises in a system that classifies them as employer property rather than rights-bearing workers.

Pakistan absorbs the casualty rate. The Gulf does not see the economic value of investigating it. The Pakistani state does not see the political value of demanding investigations. So the bodies come home, and the remittance number rises, and nobody connects the two on the front page of Dawn or in the State Bank's monthly briefing.

What the solution looks like

Other countries have done what Pakistan has not done:

• Mandatory worker insurance (Philippines OWWA model) , automatic death and injury compensation
• Repatriation as default consular service , the embassy pays, not the family
• Independent death investigation protocols , challenge "natural causes" classifications systematically
• Bilateral pressure on Gulf states for kafala reform with real enforcement
• A Madad-equivalent grievance portal where families can track every case

The full diaspora-rights and Brain Gain plan is at The Real Brain Gain Plan.

In closing

25,000 is not a small number. It is a small city's worth of dead Pakistani men every year. Most went abroad to feed families. Most came back as cargo.

The remittance numbers the government celebrates each month are computed from the survivors of this same system. The graveyard is what waits at the end of the conveyor belt, and the country that sent these men out is the one that ultimately buries them.

, Asad Baig

Frequently asked questions

How many Pakistani bodies are repatriated each year? Around 25,000 Pakistani bodies are repatriated annually from the Gulf states alone, with Saudi Arabia accounting for the largest share due to its ~2.64 million Pakistani worker population.

Why are most deaths recorded as "natural causes"? The Guardian's 2021 investigation documented that "natural causes" and "cardiac arrest" classifications frequently mask heat-stroke deaths from working in 50°C summers without breaks. The classification removes employer liability and avoids triggering compensation.

Who pays the cost of repatriating the body? In many cases the dead worker's family in Pakistan. Pakistan's embassies do not consistently cover repatriation as a default service, unlike India's Indian Community Welfare Fund or the Philippines' OWWA system.

How does this compare to other South Asian countries? The Guardian's Qatar-only investigation found 6,500+ South Asian deaths between 2010 and 2020. Pakistan's Gulf-wide figure of ~25,000 a year reflects both its larger labour migration footprint (~9 million abroad) and the structural conditions of kafala-based work.

Sources and notes

• The Guardian , "Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded," 2021
• Pakistan Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis , Diaspora figures
• Pakistan Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment , Annual reports
• "Protecting and promoting the rights of the 'reserve army of labour'," PMC, 2023
• Wikipedia "Treatment of South Asian labourers in the Gulf Cooperation Council region"
• Human Rights Watch , Migrant worker abuse documentation

Related reading

Pillar: Pakistan Brain Drain: The Graveyard of Remittancers Parent cluster: The Human Cost of Pakistan's Brain Drain

Sibling spokes:

• What Is the Kafala System and Why Pakistanis Suffer Under It
• Why 80% of Pakistani Doctors Leave Within Five Years of Graduation

Other pillars:

• Why Pakistan's Remittance Economy Is a Development Trap
• Why Pakistani Workers Earn Less Than Indians in the Gulf
• The Real Brain Gain Plan

Thank you for reading.

, Asad Baig