A revolution is needed to push the Lebanese government's
hand to make the requisite reforms to its labor laws.
Washington, DC - For Alem Dechesa, death was the only way
out. For thousands of voiceless Ethiopian domestic workers working in Lebanon,
suicide is the only avenue for escaping a nihilistic existence.
I witnessed the range of human rights abuses endured by
Ethiopian maids - from both the perspective of a Lebanese insider and a human
rights attorney - and found that Dechesa's death was anything but a horrific
aberration, but a common consequence of the modern-day slavery industry in
Lebanon.
Dechesa took her life on March 14, after experiencing severe
beatings, mental abuse and potentially more, from her employer. A video,
showing Ali Mahfouz brutally beating Dechesa in front of the Ethiopian
Consulate in Beirut, went viral after she took her life. The video, viewed by millions around the
world and propelling the story into the global news spotlight, uncovered the
dehumanisation and brutality endured by Ethiopian domestic workers in Lebanon.
Poverty, lack of viable employment alternatives and
desperation, give fertile ground for traffickers to exploit despondent
Ethiopian women. Once the birthplace of mankind, Ethiopia today serves as a
cradle for traffickers pursuing profit and Lebanese nationals, seeking cheap
labour - a virtual one-stop shop for inexpensive and convenient servitude.
Recipe for enslavement
An unsavoury blend of Lebanese ethnocentrism, racial animus
toward Africans, human trafficking and the debt bondage of maids upon arrival
from Ethiopia, make up a recipe for contemporary enslavement. While the images
of silent and submissive African maids trapped inside cosmopolitan Beirut
apartments, condos and villas seemed juxtaposed at first, the modern portrait
of Middle Eastern slavery - I gradually discovered through on-the-ground
research, interviewing nearly 50 maids, and an examination of Lebanese labour
laws and observance of human rights - was a common picture and practice.
Witnessing the living conditions of these maids - from being
made to sleep on kitchen or bathroom floors in small, congested apartments, to
being denied the opportunity to travel home for vacation - I was prompted to
search for more. I challenged family and friends, who employed undocumented
maids, many of whom were working or middle class, only to hear unapologetic
echoes including, "Everybody here has a maid, no matter your economic
class", or "They have no opportunities in Ethiopia, and they are
grateful for the work".
However, the more maids I spoke to - oftentimes
surreptitiously - the more I heard pleas for help and a desire to return home.
The deeper I dug, the more akin to chattel or classical slavery the maid
industry in Lebanon resembled.
What I found was an ugly underbelly of rape, subjugation,
violence and comprehensive dehumanisation - underlined by a pervasive and
entrenched racism toward brown and black people - which looked, smelled and
felt like slavery.
Many of these women wanted to return to their lives in
Ethiopia, but denied that wish due to tallied debts, confiscation of their
passports and travel documents and lack of funds. As evident in the video,
Dechesa was desperately fighting to flee from Mahfouz's bondage, in front of
the Ethiopian Consulate in Beirut - an attempt many Ethiopians have pursued,
contemplated or fell short of undertaking.
Lebanese-style slavery
I was an Arab American - a geographically malleable identity
that the United States marked me as a minority, and at worse, a potential
menace. However, my existential standing was turned on its head when in
Lebanon, and felt I was part of an oppressive majority that reduced Ethiopian
women into - as Cheryl I Harris of the UCLA School of Law states -
"racially contingent forms of property".
As a lawyer for the American Bar Association Rule of Law
Initiative, I coordinated an independent study, examining the illegal
trafficking of and human rights abuses suffered by Ethiopian domestic workers.
I met with Lebanese government officials, human rights organisations, and
interviewed 55 maids.
While I anticipated a list of human rights abuses, my
research uncovered what was nothing short of a full-fledged atrocity that
resembled slavery. Although it cannot be said that all cases of trafficked
Ethiopian women working in Lebanon rise to slavery-like proportions, numerous
accounts expose cases that merit, if not supersede, label. I returned to the US
alarmed, but empowered by the courage of the women I interviewed and
befriended.
My on-the-ground work with Ethiopian maids, the research
compiled and the energy it galvanised, culminated with the, "The
Trafficking of Ethiopian Domestic Workers into Lebanon: Navigating Through a
Novel Passage of the International Made Trade", published in the Berkeley
Journal of International Law.
Being half Lebanese, I aspired to be an ardent critic of the
abuses that drove Dechesa to suicide on March 14. I documented the symptoms -
mainly poverty in Ethiopia - that drove women to leave their families and go
for work aboard. I spoke about the contractual misrepresentations, the
glamorous lifestyles and exaggerated salaries promised to them by traffickers.
A network of legal and customary practices bind maids to
their work immediately upon arrival from Ethiopia. Domestic workers are often
stripped of their freedom of movement. Many are virtually imprisoned in their
employers' homes. Lebanese employers often lock the maids indoors for fear of
their fleeing.
To prevent escape, it has become common practice for
employers to seize the domestic worker's legal documents, threaten her with
various punishments and work her to physical exhaustion. Furthermore, a
standard $3,000 penalty is levied if the domestic worker leaves the position
before the contract expires, or if she returns to Ethiopia. A well-orchestrated
system is in place to curtail a victim's ability to flee or "break"
the contract and in turn, to scare and tire her into submission. Therefore, for
maids like Dechesa, taking "your own life" is the lone avenue for
escaping contemporary enslavement.
The explanations, particularly from Lebanese government
officials, paint Dechesa's suicide as an isolated incident or a consequence of
cultural racism. However, as referenced above, Lebanon is home to fervent
anti-black racism, which makes working as a maid for Ethiopian women sometimes
a fatal or death-defying employment option. Racism toward individuals of
African descent, like Dechesa and the community of Ethiopian maids she
represents, are routinely called "abeed", Arabic for "slave".
Double-victimization
Lebanese labour laws are built upon the entrenched racism,
via the "Kafala System", an arcane tradition that comprehensively
binds the maid to her employer. Maids, like Dechesa, depend on their employers
for food, lodging, health benefits (if any), whereby, as Lebanese lawyer Rolan
Taok concludes, "Creates complete dependency which bring about total
vulnerability and opens the door wide to exploitation". Since the maids
live with their employers, the lines between work and personal life are often
blurred, leaving every dimension of her life vulnerable to utter and
comprehensive control.
Lebanon's Labour Code excludes trafficked "domestic
servants" from legal protection. In fact, the Lebanese government only
ratified the Trafficking Protocol in October 2005, approximately three years
after the instrument was signed. To legally work in Lebanon, foreigners must
obtain a permit from the Ministry of Labour. The Lebanese Code of Labour
extends full social rights to foreign workers who come in legally and
successfully obtain a work permit. However, the law is malleable and enables
employers to circumvent it and not register their maids with social security or
health insurance.
In addition, the falsification of documents, including the
work permit, passports, visa, medical reports and a residence permit, is also
prevalent. Oftentimes, the victim is unaware that her documents were
fraudulently procured. Yet, the victim alone is punished if the authorities
seize falsified documents. Criminal charges are seldom, if ever, imposed on the
Lebanese employer who facilitates the illegal trafficking and employment, of a
maid.
Abuse of maids is facilitated by the Lebanese Labour Code,
which fails to put forth legally viable contract guidelines that are based on consensual
agreement, universal contract principles and human rights standards. Indeed,
the racial subjugation and commoditisation of Ethiopian maids is reified and
legitimised in the Labour Code.
In addition, the Code does not mandate maximum work hours or
workdays. Once these women are within the confines of the home, their employers
have carte blanche to not only dictate the amount of hours and days to be
worked, but also make orders that supersede the employment relationship.
The International Labour Organisation recommends that a
model domestic employer contract should be appended to all labour agreements
and should be translated into language that all parties - including the
domestic worker - can understand. Yet, the Lebanese government has not taken
active steps to introduce such, or similar measures.
Dechesas’s death
I returned to Beirut last June, on business, and attended a
party for East African domestic workers at a progressive downtown café,
T-Marbouta. The café's owner, Abdul-Rahman Zahzah, organised it because,
"These women are human beings - who like you, me and everybody else - like
to dance and enjoy life. Unfortunately, in Lebanon, these maids never have the
chance to have fun or live. This party is a reminder that they are human."
Dechesa may have been at that party. Many of the maids, who
wore temporary smiles hiding physical scars and psychological abuse at evening,
likely suffered atrocities that were not captured by videotape, experienced
inhumanity that was never tweeted or hash-tagged on social media networks and
never received global headlines after they took their lives. However, Dechesa's
death and the video, capturing the beating that precipitated her suicide, may
mobilise a new revolt against Lebanese slavery.
YouTube, social networking and viral activism have equipped
revolution and reform-minded elements in the Arab World with a new brand of
weaponry to challenge the old guard and question the status quo. For Ethiopian
domestic workers in Lebanon - given no protection under Lebanese labour or
criminal laws, doubly victimised by unenforced human rights mechanisms, and for
decades treated as invisible and anonymous commodities not persons - a single
video may spark a needed revolution for their bleak status quo.
This revolution is needed to push the Lebanese government's
hand to make the requisite reforms to its labour laws, introduce harsher
punitive consequences for all-too common criminals like Mahfouz, and in the
interim, pass immediate emergency legislation to ensure that foreign workers -
no matter their race or skin complexion - should be made to endure the brand of
brutality that drives them to suicide.
On March 23, Mahfouz was charged with abetting Dechesa's
death. However, he was not taken into custody. If not for the video, released
virally and seen by millions, would these charges have been brought against
Mafhouz? Will justice be exacted for the hundreds of known and thousands of
anonymous, victims whose abuse or deaths was not captured by video, seen on
YouTube and distributed through social networking channels?
The Lebanese government and the greater weight of its
people, has demonstrated over time that they will not make the necessary
reforms for the sake of Ethiopian domestic workers, or a genuine cultural
commitment to human rights. However, in the wake of Dechesa's suicide and the
video viewed by millions throughout the world, Lebanese slavery now has a face,
name and voice, which call for the world to take action.
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