Articles and views shared in the Weekly News Report do not necessarily represent ARM’s views. Information in these articles has not been fact-checked by ARM and may contain some errors. ARM is simply compiling all news relevant to migrant communities to inform our advocacy efforts and to facilitate the work of organizations who cater to migrant communities.

Honorary Consul of Kenyan Makes False Accusations against Kenyan Protestors [here]

The honorary consul of Kenya in Lebanon, Sayed Chalouhi, denounced the protest outside the consulate in an interview with Al Jazeera, making the following notorious claims about the women:

• “[…] Most of the protesters “don’t want to go home” and are being paid or supported by covert NGOs who only want to attract negative attention to Lebanon’s kafala system”

• “The majority of girls run away from their employer only to work in the black market, to do prostitution or drug business”

• “Half of the ladies in front of the embassy at night, they go to do prostitution. If you go to Nairobi you will see how Nairobi is at night”

• “These people are really ungrateful,”

• “Most of them, 90 percent of them, they’ve been calling me ‘daddy’, ‘dad’ for years. This is how you treat me?”

More Kenyan Women to Be Repatriated Soon while New SUC is in the Work by NCLW [here]

Nineteen Kenyan women will be traveling soon with the support of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), after 3 already left and 69 still await for their requests to be processed. The Kenyan embassy in Kuwait, which is tasked with overseeing the honorary consulate in Lebanon, sent a representative this week to oversee the processing of the laissez-passer documents of the women whose passports were confiscated by their employers.

At the same time, the head of the National Commission for Lebanese Women (NCLW), Claudine Aoun, who has been following up with the IOM and the consulate on the protest and travel requests, announced that she was working on a new version of the standard unified contract alongside the Syndicate Syndicate of the Owners of Recruitment Agencies in Lebanon (SORAL). Aoun further stated that the Kafala system is not inherently the source of the plight of migrant domestic workers, and that instead the problem is the poor implementation.