An economic boom has crammed this country's 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 Emirates, the watchdog says, "has abdicated almost entirely from its responsibility to protect workers' rights."

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. The workers often toil for two or three years to pay off debts to unscrupulous labor recruiters, the report states.

"There's no reason for a global economic powerhouse like the U.A.E. to tolerate abusive and exploitative labor practices," said Human Rights Watch researcher Hadi Ghaemi. "None of this construction would be possible without these imported workers."

Labor Minister Ali Al Kaabi said the Emirates is in the midst of beefing up its enforcement of already strict laws on labor rights and human trafficking. Al Kaabi acknowledged there are just 80 labor inspectors — too few to keep companies in line.

"Our laws are tougher than anyone else's in the Mideast," Al Kaabi said. "But the lack of inspectors means sometimes we don't see these problems."

The human rights report comes days after Dubai leader Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum issued a sweeping program of labor reform.

On Saturday the United Arab Emirates' ruler, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, announced tough penalties, up to life imprisonment, against trafficking in humans, which has illegally brought domestic servants, prostitutes and even child camel race jockeys into the country.

The Emirates has already issued laws addressing many of the abuses in the Human Rights Watch report: salaries and passports held back by companies, dangerous working conditions, shady labor agents whose fees keep workers locked in debt and labor enforcers beholden to connected companies, not workers.

But companies flout laws with impunity, because of a lack of enforcement.

Now, Sheik Mohammed has ordered the creation of an inspection directorate and a system of labor courts. He also requires companies to provide health insurance for all foreign workers and allow them to change jobs more easily.

Sometime next year, Al Kaabi said a new force of 2,000 inspectors will police this country's building sites and desert labor camps, home to hundreds of thousands of migrant workmen from South Asia.

"We're in the spotlight because of Dubai's development," Al Kaabi said. "Success means you get a lot of criticism."

The Emirates, like other Gulf countries, relies on foreign labor for private sector jobs. Labor conditions are similar in nearby Kuwait and Qatar; worse in Saudi Arabia and slightly better in Oman and Bahrain, said Ghaemi, of Human Rights Watch.

Gulf developers take advantage of unskilled men in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh willing to take "in-sourced" work for salaries set in the overcrowded South Asian labor market.

While acknowledging the Emirates still has a long way to go, Al Kaabi disputed many of the report's findings, including its allegations that the government was not penalizing companies for violations.

Dozens of companies were fined in July and August alone, the minister said, for not halting work during searing afternoons when temperatures often rise above 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

A company with royal family ties was shut down for six months for not paying workers. Another saw 270 laborers transferred elsewhere for making late payments, Al Kaabi said.

The reforms come after Dubai and Abu Dhabi were hit during the past year by dozens of strikes, occasionally violent, over unpaid wages. The government responded by cracking down on companies, threatening to deport strike leaders and saying workers could eventually form union-like organizations.

"They're building this country with their shoulders and hands. The least we can give them is their basic rights," Al Kaabi said.