LEBANON: Foreign domestic workers in Lebanon speak of abuse as activists try to amend labour law

Record ID: 334630

  • Title: LEBANON: Foreign domestic workers in Lebanon speak of abuse as activists try to amend labour law
  • Date: 23rd March 2010
  • Summary: MORE OF THE MIGRANT WORKERS' SHELTER
  • Embargoed: 7th April 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: International Relations,Employment
  • Reuters ID: LVADDHPC12L8CMBZFQYL4VWDNABS
  • Story Text: Human Rights Watch says Lebanon is among the countries in the Middle East with a bad record for treating domestics workers in the country, tens of thousands of whom come from countries like Ethiopia, Sri Lanka and Nepal every year.
    A sign hangs outside an unassuming entrance in the busy Dora district in Beirut. It reads "laksetha'' which means ''well-being'' in Sri Lanka's Sinhala language.
    Inside, tens of migrant workers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal who have fled abusive employers sleep, sew and pray while waiting for an end to their dilemma. Their hope is to either go back to their homeland or find a better household to work for in Lebanon.
    There are almost 200,000 domestic migrant workers in the country, the majority of them women from Africa and Asia.
    They come to the country to work as maids for Lebanese families. Rights groups say many of them end up either physically or sexually-abused, and many more do not have access to the simplest rights such as a day off.
    One Bangladeshi worker said she was forced to work in three households day and night - without pay for two years.
    Amid tears, she recounted how her employer would not give her her monthly salary of 100 U.S dollars, but instead beat her every time she asked for it.
    She said she hardly ate and had little sleep, and clothes were out of the question. She said she could not even get her employer to buy her a bra.
    "I worked in three houses, I worked in three houses and sometimes I ate and sometimes I didn't eat. They all ate but I couldn't. I didn't eat, I went to sleep without eating," said the worker in broken Arabic. She said she wanted to remain anonymous for fear her employers would track her down.
    Another worker from Nepal said she was sexually-abused by the son of the family she worked for. When she protested, they beat her. And when she ran to the police, the officers sent her back.
    "Madam beat me and mister said he wanted to have sex with me. When I said I don't want sex, he beat me too," she said, also preferring anonymity.
    Najla Chahda, who runs the migrant centre set up by NGO group Caritas, says the reason why so many maids run into so many problems in Lebanon is due to the lack of a definitive law that guards their rights and states their duties.
    The migrant centre handles the cases of the fleeing workers in the judiciary and the police. Many of them can't travel back to their countries because their passports have been confiscated or their employers have filed police complaints against them which bars them from leaving Lebanon until their cases have been resolved.
    Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report in 2009 that every week, a maid dies in Lebanon from unexplained circumstances. Many of them either commit suicide or die whilst trying to escape.
    Nadim Houri, who works for HRW, said the Lebanese government should work on clearly defining a law for the status of migrant workers in Lebanon.
    "Unfortunately, since we published the report in 2008, there has no improvement in the issue. In 2009, we registered eight deaths in Lebanon in October 2009, and in January 2010, there were at least three cases of deaths. There has to be a change, on two levels. The first would be to amend the labour law to include these maids," Houri said in an interview.
    But in the absence of such a law, the abuse and fallout appears to continue.
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