First strides of reform for Lebanese migrant workers

Oriana Robertson
September 17, 2010
2:48 pm

As migrant workers come to Lebanon to work as servants, a popular employment destination, many receive the brunt of abuse from employers. Incidents have gone reported of employers starving their maids, locking them inside the house for long periods of time, and confiscating their passports among other personal items. Lebanese migrant workers are less likely to report employers because the employers are usually sponsoring them to remain in the country and because of the lengthy judiciary processes in general. Sometimes if the maid leaves to file a complaint, she can automatically be deported or lose her right to live in the country. When employers are actually reported, they usually receive minimum fines and sentences, if anything. “The Lebanese judiciary does a poor job enforcing the rights of these workers,” concludes the Human Rights Watch. The HRW’s investigations conclude that out of 114 cases, not one of the employers faced charges.

A problem with the maid’s current predicament in Lebanon is that few of them know their rights. There is a lack of information (in their own language) concerning their rights as workers. Organizations have set up shelters, better access to legal aid, interpreters, and hot-lines for migrant workers to give them some form of support and security. Other changes are being made to ensure the safety of these workers. For example, foreign consuls in Lebanon are doing more research on employers before they assign them a servant. A reform is also being implemented on the employment system to monitor labor and households. The creation of a blacklist of past abusive employers is also being up kept. Additionally, workers are contacted monthly for the first year to check up on them and monitor the employers.

I think that a flaw; however, could be that after the first few months of employment, although the workers would be checked up on, what would happen once the employers get more comfortable with the worker. There are limitations to this system because the workers could easily be persuaded to lie to the human rights organizations. No real enforcement is really possible. If a migrant worker was able to go to one of these proposed sources for help, he or she would most likely not be able to find work or sponsorship afterwards to support his or herself. These reforms have good intentions but there are many glitches that need to be considered to have any real improvement in the system. They are surely moving in the right direction, though.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/09/lebanon-domestic-workers-abuse-rape-maids-ethiopia-phillippines-failure-justice-court-police-securit.html