Refugees News

49% of Syrian Refugee Children in Lebanon Aren’t Enrolled in School, According to UNICEF [here]

Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF Representative in Lebanon, has announced a pilot phase of a new non-formal educational program in response to “an education and learning crisis.” This crisis has disproportionately affected Syrian refugee children, estimating that half of them are not enrolled in school.

The program targets children between the ages of 8-14 years who have been out of school for two consecutive years or more in collaboration with the ministry of education in Lebanon.

Refugees and migrant children have been struggling for years in Lebanon to access education. When it comes to finding schools for their children, refugees and migrant parents have two main options: either sending them to private schools that may accept families without proper documentation, but charge out-of-reach fees, or attempting to enroll them in public schools, where they are often prevented from registering by school staff. This has been exacerbated by the economic crisis which increased the pressure on public schools. Families have consistently reported facing discrimination in those registration processes.

Four Syrian Children Died after Drowning, One Child Survived [here]

Four Syrian children, including three siblings, drowned in an old water well in Daroun, Keserwan, which led to their death, while a fifth child was rescued.

The details of the accidents which happened in a “rugged and dangerous area” had not been disclosed, and no information has been released regarding the investigations of the circumstances of the incident.

Migrant Workers News

After 10 Months of Pre-Trial Arrest, Court Judge Clears a Ghanaian Worker from Theft Claims Falsified by the Accuser’s Wife [here]

A Ghanaian worker was declared innocent after being held for 10 months in pretrial detention. 

Court judge cleared the worker of the theft claims against her after discovering that the accuser’s wife did not assign a sworn translator when the worker gave her testimony.

Instead, the accuser’s wife assigned herself as a translator, which was suspicious and illegal.

The worker denied the wife’s accusations and what was written in the testimony. She testified to the judge that the accuser’s wife had planted evidence in order to frame her, and that she’s been working for her employer for over a year, and that they did not pay her salary for the last two months of her employment.

While the judge called for further actions to be taken against the internal security forces personnel who were involved, the fate of the worker after the verdict was not reported, whether she was released or had her employment terminated and transferred to a different sponsor, or whether she would get deported. Moreover, the worker’s claims regarding wage theft were not addressed. 

This case highlights the injustice of the justice system in Lebanon, with arbitrary detentions lasting for months, sometimes years, for innocent workers while employers systematically get away with wage theft, mistreatment and abuse.

Malicious theft accusations have been a common tool used by employers under Kafala to get out of their responsibilities, namely paying their wages and repatriation fees, or to seek revenge on migrant domestic workers who leave their employment.

It’s worth noting that Al-Akhbar’s reporting contained a contradictory statement and used victimizing language. The headline, which translates to “Innocent Because Her Rights Were Taken Away,” implies that the worker may well have committed the crime, but was only let off because she’s disadvantaged.

Additionally, one paragraph referred to the accuser’s wife as the worker’s employer, despite the unclarity about who actually is the employer.

Over Two Thirds of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon are Survivors of Sexual Violence [here] and [here]

Migrant-led organization Egna Legna Besidet and the Institute for Migration Studies in the Lebanese American University have released the findings of their new study titled “Acknowledged but Forgotten: The Gender Dimensions of Sexual Violence Against Migrant Domestic Workers in Post-Crisis Lebanon.”

According to the study, 68% of the respondents had “survived at least one incident of sexual harrasment during their employment or stay in Lebanon.”

The study also looked at the profiles of predators and found that the majority of respondents reported their male employer as the perpetrator of their experiences of sexual violence, followed by taxi drivers and friends of employers.

Lastly, the study concluded with some policy recommendations on the local governmental level, namely, to replace Kafala with “an employment contractual system that falls directly under the mandate of the country’s Ministry of Labor.”

For more details, you can read the full study here.

Al-Arabiya Morning Show coverage here.

International Labor Organization and UN Women Call on the Lebanese Government to Dismantle Kafala [here]

ILO and UN Women released a joint statement on October 29, 2022 calling on the Lebanese government and society alike to address the urgent need “for decent work in home-based care,” prioritizing the need to “dismantle Kafala” as the path to achieve labor and social protection.

The situation of care work in Lebanon, a country with “the highest proportion of older people and the highest life expectancy” among the Arab states, was affected by the collapse of the country’s economy, which relies heavily on “on under-paid workers through Lebanon’s kafala system.”

Following a “multi-stakeholder consultation that took place on 3 October 2022 to discuss the home-based care economy in Lebanon,” the statement called on the government to:

• Develop mechanisms to extend labour and social protection to home-based care workers, thus formalizing the occupation and creating minimum decent work standards.

• Ensure that the rights of care workers are reflected in national strategies and action plans on older persons, disabled persons, child care and social protection.

• Address social and cultural norms that relegate care and domestic work to women only and refer to it as ‘unskilled’ and low-value work.

• Professionalize the sector but without creating unnecessary fragmentation and hierarchy.

For more details, you can read the full statement here.

Tayyar.org coverage here.

History of the Kafala System in Lebanon [here]

The Kafala system, which serves as the framework for regulating the entry and exit of migrant workers to Lebanon, as well as their residence and work here, has long been a pillar of the capitalist system and culture in Lebanon.

Reliance on “outside help” for domestic work dates back to the early 20th century, however, the practices that we identify today as Kafala, namely, relying on Asian and African migrant women, can be traced back to the Lebanese Civil War.

In this piece published by the Public Source, Sumayya Kassamali digs further into the history of Kafala, Neoliberalism and postwar Lebanon to answer the question: “Might Kafala, in fact, also be an elaborate Ponzi scheme?”

General Security Publishes List of Arrests, Entry/Exit, Work Visas disaggregated by nationality from Mid-August to Mid-September [here]

The General Security Office (GSO) published a breakdown of arrests, entry/exit, and work visas between mid-August and mid-September in the new issue of the GS journal released on October 5th. Highlights included the following:

• Nearly 280 migrants and refugees were arrested and interrogated;
• 183 migrants and refugees were released from detention after interrogation;
• Around 5,015 work visas were granted to migrant workers mostly to Ethiopians, Kenyans and Sierra Leoneans. There is no information on how many of these work permits were granted to newcomers.
• 337,033 foreigners and migrants entered Lebanon compared to 408,750 who left in the said time period.