The Philippine president has threatened to impose a total ban on sending workers to Kuwait because of sexual abuses that have caused some Filipino women to kill themselves.

President Rodrigo Duterte said in a speech Thursday that he wants Filipino officials to tell their Kuwaiti counterparts the abuses are unacceptable and that the Philippines may impose a total ban on the deployment of workers to the oil-rich country unless the abuses are corrected.

Duterte says: "I do not want a quarrel with Kuwait. I respect their leaders but they have to do something about this because many Filipinas will commit suicide."

More than 250,000 Filipinos work in the Arab nation. The Philippines is a major labor exporter, with about a 10th of the country's 100 million people working abroad.