{"id":3530,"date":"2020-07-27T19:34:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T19:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armlebanon.org\/?post_type=advocacy&p=3530"},"modified":"2025-12-11T15:57:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T12:57:19","slug":"migrant-workers-trapped-in-lebanon-are-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armlebanon.org\/ar\/migrant-workers-trapped-in-lebanon-are-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Migrant workers trapped in Lebanon are at risk!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Migrant workers trapped in Lebanon are at risk!<\/h2><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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27\/07\/2020<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Evacuation Campaigns<\/span><\/span><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The following appeal was sent to AU mechanisms and UN Special Procedures including the\u00a0SR on the rights of migrant workers, the\u00a0SR on contemporary forms of slavery and the\u00a0SR on contemporary forms of racism along with the Committee on Migrant Workers on July 7, 2020. We urge you to circulate it, issue similar public statements and urge relevant entities to take immediate action.\u00a0<\/p>

Urgent appeal: Migrant workers trapped in Lebanon are at risk!<\/strong><\/p>

Lebanon\u2019s current economic, political, and coronavirus crises have trapped migrant workers in the country, where they are now facing increasing hunger, homelessness, and exploitation without any protection. More than 100 migrant domestic workers have been abandoned by their employers or sponsors at their consulates, where they can receive little support, and many more have become homeless.<\/p>

With the worsening economic conditions, deaths of migrant women are only expected to increase. In the past few months, suspected suicides or murders of migrant workers have become a frequent occurrence in Lebanon, with local\u00a0\u0627\u0644\u062a\u0642\u0627\u0631\u064a\u0631<\/a>\u00a0recording at least two to three incidents a week. According to the General Security\u00a0statistics<\/a>, two migrant workers die every week. On 14 March,\u00a0Faustina Tay<\/a>, a Ghanian domestic worker, was found dead under her employer\u2019s fourth-storey home. Prior to her death,Tay\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0her sponsor to travel back home due to the abuse she endured.\u00a0 She worked for months in exchange for her return ticket home and was made to sign a paper that she\u2019ll keep working for free until she returns home. Early May, two workers were found dead, one of whom was\u00a0lynched<\/a>. On 19 June, an\u00a0Ethiopian worker<\/a>\u00a0was found dead in her employer\u2019s home.\u00a0<\/p>

The shortage of US dollars in Lebanon started months prior to the Lebanese uprising in October 2019, leading to an economic crisis and the rapid devaluation of the Lebanese currency, Lira. The currency has lost 70% of its value since October, with skyrocketing unemployment and the tripling of prices of many essential goods. The crisis has severely impacted Migrant Workers, particularly domestic workers. Migrant domestic labor in Lebanon is regulated through the\u00a0\u0643\u0641\u0627\u0644\u0629<\/a>\u00a0(sponsorship) system, which enables abuse and exploitation of workers by requiring them to obtain their work and residency permits through their employers. Workers under the Kafala system are excluded from\u00a0 the Lebanese Labor Law and as such do not benefit from any of its protections, including minimum wage, maximum working hours, social security, and the right to organize and unionize. The sponsor has the power to determine a worker\u2019s legal status or to revoke it. There are at least 250,000 migrant workers in Lebanon, according to\u00a0Amnesty<\/a>, many of whom are employed by middle-class households as domestic staff, although activists estimate the number may be higher. A large proportion of that workforce is Ethiopian, and some are from other African and Asian countries.<\/p>

Prior to the crisis, international and local organizations and\u00a0migrant workers themselves<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0spoken out about the kafala system<\/a>, even\u00a0international media outlets<\/a>\u00a0have written extensively about racism and\u00a0exploitation of migrant workers<\/a>\u00a0in Lebanon, and international campaigns have broken that silence against the\u00a0high death toll of migrant domestic workers committing suicide<\/a>\u00a0as they only way out of their conditions, and survivors of the kafala system in Lebanon have\u00a0given testimonies about horrid level of exploitation and physical abuse<\/a>. The UN expert on contemporary forms of slavery has\u00a0commented<\/a>\u00a0several times on the abuses caused by the sponsorship system.<\/p>

Additionally, during Lebanon\u2019s UPR in 2015, States participating in the Working Group have issued several\u00a0recommendations<\/a>\u00a0to the Lebanese authorities, including improving the situation of migrant workers and amending the Labor Law to extend legal protection to domestic workers, to abolish the sponsorship system and to ratify human rights instruments such as the ILO Convention 189 (domestic workers) and the Convention on the rights of migrant workers.<\/p>

Domestic workers are being dismissed by their employers at an unprecedented rate. As a result, many workers are made homeless and\u00a0most workers cannot afford basic necessities<\/a>. In only two months (May and June 2020), the Anti-Racism Movement received more than 1,000 calls from migrant workers of different nationalities asking for food as they can no longer afford it, many calling on behalf of their families or apartments with up to ten or twenty people. These numbers show an alarming hyperdeterioration of the living conditions of migrant workers, despite the work of migrant workers feminist collectives such as Egna Legna Besidet, which have been\u00a0providing<\/a>\u00a0their communities with food. Migrant workers are now at a precarious situation and at risk of starvation.\u00a0<\/p>

ARM also\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that more than 100 migrant workers of different nationalities have been abandoned by their employers or went to their embassy \/ consulate after becoming homeless in the first few weeks of June 2020. The majority of these workers are Ethiopian due to the size of the Ethiopian community in Lebanon. This does not include the hundreds of women seeking help from their embassies and consulates, ARM, and other organizations every week \u2013 but who are still trapped in their employers homes or are living on their own.<\/p>

The Ethiopian consulate initially closed its doors to its citizens but public outrage led to the replacement of the consul on Friday 26 June. The new consul opened the consulate\u2019s shelter to the 13 women and some of the others left at its doorstep, although concerns were also raised about the conditions of that shelter. Additionally, some of the workers were taken to a shelter run by Caritas. However, 13 Ethiopian women left by 22 June and have\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0concerning violations of their rights during their stay. Providing shelter is not enough as it does not ensure that workers get back their unpaid wages or the cost of the ticket home. The workers are demanding repatriation.<\/p>

There are several barriers to this urgent repatriation: the cost of the ticket, the cost of the mandatory quarantine (now reduced from 14 to 3 days in Ethiopia<\/a>), the penalty fees for workers who overstayed their residency, and the quotas on the number of returnees allowed into each country per day. In addition, many of the workers who leave would effectively forego their right to compensation for their labor as no accessible justice mechanism currently exists to guarantee that they are paid the wages they are owed.\u00a0<\/p>

Sponsors of domestic workers are contractually obligated to provide the cost of the ticket back home. Yet the Lebanese Ministry of Labor has consistently failed to hold sponsors to their obligation. The Lebanese and Ethiopian governments have also failed to devise an evacuation plan for the workers.\u00a0<\/p>

Thus, many workers are now left stranded, trapped and at risk in Lebanon and subjected to both Lebanese and their national authorities\u2019 lack of response. We are deeply concerned about migrant workers in Lebanon, and Ethiopian domestic workers in specific.\u00a0 Migrant workers have the right to go back to their countries, and therefore, we call on you to:<\/p>