The following is a listing solutions and measures meant to secure the fundamental rights of female migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. These proposals have been collected in reports, studies and press releases from Human Right Watch, the International Labour Organization and Caritas-Lebanon. They address to the Lebanese government, foreign missions of the sending countries, private and public institutions or associations, businesses and NGOs.
A meeting was held between the “syndicate of bringing in maids” in Lebanon and the consul of Madagascar, to discuss the way to cooperate, following the decision of the Government of Madagascar to ban sending Malagasy women maids to Lebanon as it would – according to the article published on the National News Agency website – have negative repercussions on the sector and on a large number of Lebanese families. An accord was reached, always according to the same article, for cooperation between the syndicate and the consul to control the unfortunate excesses that took place recently.
Ethiopian Suicides comments: I wonder if they meant suicide, torture, deprivation of salary and of freedom of movement, by "unfortunate excesses". The syndicate of importing maids is clearly fearing to loose money after several countries banned their women nationals to come to Lebanon.
“نقابة اصحاب مكاتب استقدام الخادمات بحثت مع قنصل مدغشقر سبل التعاون,” National News Agency, December 8, 2009, http://www.nna-leb.gov.lb/phpfolder/loadpage.php?page=JOU47.html
عقدت نقابة اصحاب مكاتب استقدام الخادمات في لبنان، اجتماعا مع قنصل دولة مدغشقر في لبنان، وتم البحث في موضوع قرار سلطات مدغشقر بمنع وحظر ارسال عاملات منازل الى لبنان وارتداداته السلبية على القطاع، وعلى قسم كبير من العائلات اللبنانية، وتم الاتفاق بموجبه على تفعيل التعاون بين النقابة ودولة مدغشقر ممثلة بالقنصلية العامة في لبنان لضبط التجاوزات المؤسفة التي حصلت في الآونة الاخيرة.
I was busy cooking dinner, when we started hearing screams - only one person, repeatedly, a female voice, screaming - maybe 10-15 seconds. This is not normal, so I ran out to the balcony to see if I could see what was going on. As I got onto the balcony, I looked over at the next building, and saw something, fairly large coming from a balcony on about the 6th floor. The window was open (actually may have been a door, but not sure in my mind) was open. I looked down toward the parking lot to see if I could see what had fallen, and couldn't see everything, as our balcony doesn't have a clear view. I could see reflections of a few people off the windows of a vehicle, and they weren't reacting very much, seemed sort of like they were checking things out, but disinterested. so i figured it was just a piece of furniture, tv, something like that. There was no screaming or response of any kind. This was around 6 or 615 I'm guessing. Around 8, my husband and I left the building, and we ran into a neighbor, who told us that a domestic worker had "thrown herself" from the balcony of the 6th floor. She was corrected (in Arabic) by another neighbor, who said it was a visitor of the domestic worker, her sister or something. Not sure what the actual story is. When we left the building and walked into the parking lot area, there was a policeman standing at the front of the vehicle next to where she fell, seemingly not doing anything. The woman was still on the ground with just a blanket covering her. This was almost 2 hours later. When we returned home around 1230 in the morning, there was a car parked in the space where she had been, and the area was wet, so it looked like they had "cleaned up" the area.
(this testimony was published on a Facebook event page "Vigil in Hamra". The December 2009 event was a vigil at the site of the death of the migrant worker who is mentioned in the testimony above)
Yesterday, Ziad Baroud, Lebanon’s Minister of Interior, informed the ambassadors of Philippine, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka that his ministry will be taking steps towards the protection of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. Such steps include moving the General Security prisons from Adlieh area (a prison under a traffic bridge) to another location more respective of human rights, as well as more thorough investigations in cases of death of these workers. Sources to Al-Akhbar newspaper added that the right of foreign maids to access courts will be guaranteed.
Note: this is quite an interesting development. Will the minister be up to the challenge of reforming the system of entry, stay and exit of migrant domestic workers,which has proven terribly faulty?
When I was being interviewed by a journalist from El Mundo (Spain), we somewhat agreed that migrant domestic workers in Lebanon are well treated “in a significant number of homes”. There’s a lot of generalization about the “evil” Lebanese housewives. But 95% of the people I know who have MDWs at home (family, friends) do not mistreat in any way their maids. (There’s one exception though where the women employer suffers the superiority complex like many Lebanese).
So, it’s not all about bad housewives! One aspect of the problem is the complete absence of safety nets for that category of mistreated migrant workers the percentage of which we do not know.
And to illustrate the complication of the problem, I talked with many people about the need for “a hot-line” where beaten maids can call for help. But that hot-line will have to be able to respond in fluent Ethiopian, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, Malagasy, Bengali, Eritrean, Filipino, etc. 24 hours / 7 days. Who’s going to set up and finance that? And we need brochures in all these languages informing of the hot-line.
In one case where a migrant domestic worker dragged to courts several years ago in Lebanon, she couldn’t speak Arabic or English. A French priest who’s involved in migrant rights protection, and had lived in her country, understood her language and was translating to French. And a translator was translating from French to Arabic for the judge and lawyers.
In the last three weeks alone, Wissam notes, four Ethiopian women have died. Lebanese police say the deaths of Kassaye Atsegenet, 24, Saneet Mariam, 30, Matente Kebede Zeditu, 26, Tezeta Yalmiya, 26 were probably suicides. But as human rights activists here will testify, the truth about what happened to them may never be known because police usually only take into account the employer's testimony. Migrants who survive abuse or suicide attempts are not usually provided with a translator, meaning their version of events often does not get registered with officials.
(...)
ضرب وإهانة عاملة إثيوبية في مخفر
تعرّضت سيدة إثيوبية للضرب المبرّح والإذلال على يد رجال قوى الأمن الداخلي، يوم الثلاثاء في الثانية والربع ظهراً، في مخفر ميناء الحصن الكائن في منطقة برج المر، وذلك بحسب شهود عيان. ووفقاً للشهود أنفسهم، فإن رجال الأمن ادّعوا أن السيدة الإثيوبية كانت قد تعرّضت لهم، ما برّر بنظرهم الاعتداء عليها. وقد اتصلت “الأخبار” بالمخفر المذكور، من دون أن يجيب أحد. فاتصلت بالضابط المسؤول، الرائد و.أ.ح. فلم يبادر إلى نفي الحادثة، بل أجاب بنبرة مرتفعة وحادة “لا يحق لكم السؤال عن ذلك”، علماً أن المتصل عرّف عن نفسه بأنه صحافي، وتبيّن لاحقاً أن سبب توقيف السيدة الإثيوبية هو عدم حيازتها أوراقاً ثبوتية.
From the moment she arrived in Lebanon, Martha*, an Ethiopian woman in her twenties, was subjected to abuse by her employer and her three children – a 9-year-old and two teenagers. They beat her ceaselessly, verbally abused her, locked her in the house, and bolted the fridge door. “Imagine a 9-year-old child beating you. I cried,” said Martha. Two months into her ‘contract’, she escaped to the Ethiopian consulate where she was followed by her employer, with children in tow, who tried to publically beat her. The consulate protected her and let her leave with an apparently apologetic member of the employment agency that had brought Martha to Lebanon.
Surprisingly, Martha was sent back to the same family and the brutal regime from which she had fled. “I tried to kill myself by drinking some cleaning liquid, but only my mouth burned. I did not try again,” Martha smiled sadly. In fact, Martha lasted a year and escaped when her employer asked her to go out and buy a broom. “As soon as I was outside, I started to run.”
Martha survived, but many other women who come to this country as maids, only find themselves hostages to brutality that ends up taking their lives. In the past two weeks, four Ethiopian women have died in Lebanon as a result of either suspected or confirmed suicide. Three – Matente Kebede Zeditu (26), Saneet Mariam (30), and Tezeta Yalmiya (26) – were reported in the media. Although Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) figure of more than one death out of around 200,000 domestic workers per week created waves when it was released in August 2008, the Lebanese government has taken no substantial action, and maids keep dying needlessly.
“These deaths are the tip of the iceberg,” says Nadim Houry, senior researcher at HRW. “It is only the most dramatic manifestation of a number of violations [of basic human rights] such as ill-treatment, and isolation of these workers.”
For example, it is standard practice for Lebanese employers to ‘retain’ the domestic worker’s passport, while many do not let them go out for years at a time. Verbal abuse is common as is the withholding of salaries.
Although most of these “standard practices” are illegal under the Lebanese constitution and the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, who employ domestic staff treat them fairly, the problem is that there is no law enforcement body to protect the most basic human rights of foreign maids and prosecute abusive employers.
As a result, many choose to end their lives. But even then, the suffering continues with the repatriation of the body. A Nepali woman who died at the end of August is still in the morgue. “There are some cases where a body is left in the fridge for a long time, and neither the insurance nor the employer wants to pay for the trip home,” says Houry. The best way to stop these deaths, he says, is to hold the Lebanese government accountable. “What would be required are concrete measures by the government that would reduce the isolation that these workers feel.”
Official police sources said that the Ethiopian woman who committed suicide by jumping from the seventh floor in Gemmayze, did so because of a soured relationship with her sister. Nevertheless, Broukti*, an Ethiopian domestic worker, who has worked for more than a decade in Lebanon and is also a local community organizer, is skeptical. “I don’t believe it. If it was in Ethiopia, nobody would kill herself because she fought with her sister.”
In fact, according to the deaths recorded by HRW, much more than half of all deaths are those of Ethiopian women who make up less than a quarter of the workforce. Broukti has two explanations. Firstly, the problem is that many of the women from her country come from rural areas and pay hundreds of dollars to smugglers believing they will work in white-collar jobs abroad. When they arrive in Lebanon, they find their situation unbearable. The Ethiopian government’s ban on Ethiopians coming to Lebanon since last year has only exacerbated the problem.
Furthermore, for many of these women, the treatment as second-class human beings without family, friends, culture and humanity is insufferable. “We are Ethiopians with a history. We have never been colonized. We colonized until the border of Saudi Arabia. We’re a very proud nation,” Broukti says.
*Not their real names.
سـقطت عـن الشـرفة
The National News Agency has reported today, October 28, that an Ethiopian domestic worker has committed suicide in Abra, East of Saida, by jumping from the third floor. No age or additional information was provided.
National News Agency, October 28, 2009, http://www.nna-leb.gov.lb/phpfolder/loadpage.php?page=JOU85.html
