The suicide of an Ethiopian domestic worker in Lebanon
highlights the abuse of migrants given no rights or safeguards
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| Tourists cool off in a pool in Beirut, but anti-racism campaigners say Lebanon also has a darker side. Photograph: Joseph Barrak/AFP/Getty Images |
The Lebanese Anti-Racism Movement is organising a
"die-in" this Saturday in Beirut and London, with protesters lying in
front of the Lebanese embassy to highlight the maltreatment of migrant domestic
workers.
While several local organisations have been working
tirelessly for some years to bring attention to the plight of migrant workers,
the aim of this protest is to push the Lebanese government into measureable
positive action.
The recent suicide of an Ethiopian domestic worker, Alem
Dechasa, who had suffered a very public beating from her employer in front of
the Ethiopian consulate that she had been trying to escape to, was the latest
case to generate public outcry and a call for action.
Support for migrant domestic workers has also come from
several international organisations. In 2010 Human Rights Watch criticised the
Lebanese judiciary's failure to hold abusive employers accountable and last
year the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) adoption of a convention on
domestic workers set the first international labour standards for such workers.
But the convention's efficacy is only guaranteed once member states ratify it –
none has yet done so.
With migrant domestic workers in Lebanon dying at a rate of
more than one a week – often by throwing themselves from balconies – it is no
wonder that countries such as Ethiopia ban their citizens from seeking work
there. Nevertheless, for the desperate and impoverished, blanket bans are
ineffective, if not harmful.
Dechasa's case sadly demonstrates that prohibition only
leads to those desperate enough to take up domestic work becoming invisible and
unprotected. The roots of the issue lie in the cultural, economic and
legislative frameworks of the countries that allow these abuses to continue.
Endemic racism and a belief that migrant workers are
grateful to be employed enable an attitude that treats migrant workers as
second-class citizens. Compounding this is the fact that migrants are indeed
desperate to work, which perpetuates exploitative conditions and empowers
countries such as Saudi Arabia to ban Indonesian and Filipina maids from
working in the kingdom after their countries imposed certain hiring conditions.
Exclusion of migrant domestic workers from the host
country's legislative safeguards – labour laws and occupational health and
safety provisions – leaves the workers defenceless and entirely dependent on
individual employers' interpretations of decent living and working conditions.
The common kafala (sponsorship) system of hiring these
workers ties them to one employer for the duration of their contract, making it
difficult to change jobs. In an alarming throwback to "Victorian-era
slavery" the UK has recently announced plans to adopt a similar form of bonded
labour demonstrating the international culpability towards the plight of
migrant domestic workers. This system, along with often exorbitant fees paid to
recruitment agents, encourages an unfortunate interpretation of kafala as a
form of "ownership", most sinisterly illustrated by the confiscation
of the workers' passports. Under the kafala system an unscrupulous employer can
largely ignore any previously agreed contractual terms relating to working
hours, pay or living conditions, safe in the knowledge that no authority will
demand otherwise.
Ratification of the ILO's convention would be a simple and
effective way of granting domestic workers the necessary rights and safeguards,
as well as helping to clean up certain countries' tarnished image. The reluctance
may relate to the convention's requirement that countries inspect and monitor
the treatment of migrant domestic workers within the private sanctuary of
people's homes – a highly sensitive and controversial idea in the Arab region.
Nevertheless, some Arab countries, such as Jordan, have
enacted national laws while others are in the process of doing so. Meanwhile,
any alternative immigration scheme in which national labour laws are extended
to cover migrant domestic workers and ensure their protection and access to
legal recourse would be welcomed.
Either way, there is a genuine need to raise awareness and
develop a more humane view of migrant domestic workers in Arab countries,
recognising them as real workers and not servants.
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