Modern-day slavery in Lebanon: What it is, what has been done, and what we can do about it
Policy Analysis by Tala Majzoub, Staff Writer
June 10th, 2020
The untimely deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and so many others have left people all around the world mourning. In addition to dealing with Covid-19 and its repercussions, the world continues to grapple with racism and anti-blackness. Today, we find ourselves contemplating if we will ever overcome the structural and systemic racism that continues to plague social, economic, historical and cultural dimensions of human life.
In Lebanon, many people took to social media to stand in solidarity with George Floyd: from posting #blackouttuesday black boxes and sharing stories in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, to sharing donation links and petitions. On the other hand, many others called out the “hypocrites” for showing support to BLM, yet failing to fight the anti-blackness in their own backyards. A critical part of disrupting and unpacking the deeply embedded anti-blackness is recognizing that the problem remains very much alive with us today in Lebanon, and it lurks very close to our homes.
To be clear, I emphasize anti-blackness in this article to dismantle a specific kind of racial prejudice directed towards black people. The word “racism” is a catch-all that could encapsulate everything, from black people being denied fair access to mortgage loans in the states, to Palestinians being legally barred from owning property in Lebanon. There is a tendency to lump all ethnic minorities together – for ease, or out of laziness and ignorance. The word racism might oversimplify what it means to be marked as black in an anti-black world – it is more than a matter of “racism against black people”. The African-American studies professor Frank B.Wilderson,[1] who coined the term “Afro-pessimism,” argues that anti-blackness indexes the structural reality so that in the larger society, blackness is intimately tied to “slaveness.”
From whips to guns, the slave patrols of the 16th century are the ancestors of modern day police departments in America, and the ancestors of what we call “modern day slavery”: the Kafala system in the Middle East.
Background: What is the Kafala System?
The Kafala (Sponsorship) (more like ownership) program emerged in the 1950s to regulate the relationship between employers and migrant workers. The practice remains relevant today in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and also in the Arab states of Jordan and Lebanon.
The Kafala system legally binds the migrant worker’s immigration status to the individual employer or sponsor (kafeel) for their contract period. Consequently, the migrant worker cannot enter the country, transfer employment, nor leave the country for any reason without obtaining the explicit and written permission from their kafeel. The worker must be sponsored by a kafeel in order to enter the destination country and remains tied to this kafeel throughout their stay. The kafeel is expected to report to the immigration authorities if the migrant worker leaves their employment, and must ensure the worker leaves the country after the contract ends. In some cases, the kafeel exerts further control and dominance over the migrant worker by forcefully confiscating their passport and travel documents, despite legislation in some destination countries that declares this practice illegal. This situates the migrant worker as completely dependent upon their kafeel for their livelihood, income, and residency.
The Kafala system emphasizes the temporary and subordinate nature of a migrant worker’s presence in the country: even if the worker remains present in the country for a long time, s/he doesn’t acquire the rights of citizenship.
In theory, the restrictive immigration policies of the Kafala system act to “limit the stay of overseas workers to the duration of their contract”. But in response to the high demand for labor, the non-compliance by both employers and migrant workers has resulted in a significant minority of long-term or permanent residents, along with a significant number of second-generation migrants and development in irregular employment. In reality, migrant workers remain vulnerable in this situation for years, living with the threat of unpaid wages, arrest, detention, and ultimately deportation should they complain or leave.
Should the migrant worker decide to leave the workplace without the employer’s written approval, they may be charged with ‘absconding’, which is a criminal offense. In other words, if a worker decides to flee, perhaps due to maltreatment or poor living conditions, they remain at risk of being treated as a felon, instead of receiving appropriate victim support. The migrant worker is further constrained by the structure of the Kafala system to make a complaint or even seek protection.
Kafala System in Lebanon: Modern day Slavery
According to Amnesty International,[2] Lebanon is home to over 250,000 migrant domestic workers (MWD), primarily from Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and Nepal. While many domestic workers are employed in households where they are respected and treated like family, others suffer and live under inhumane conditions. This is where the Kafala system becomes a problem. In early 2019, Lebanon’s Labor Minister declared his willingness to improve the conditions of domestic workers.[3] Unfortunately, to this day, no legitimate decision has been made regarding the Kafala system. Yet, many international organizations such as the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International continue to demand justice for migrant domestic workers in Lebanon.
Even during the popular anti-government demonstrations that started on October 17th, protesters raised awareness upon the dangers of the Kafala system whereby they sought towards the abolition of this system… still, nothing.
ESCWA’s Situation Report on International Migration 2019 emphasizes that the “Kafala sponsorship system that prevails in the largest migrant destination countries of the Arab region limits the protection, defense and exercise of migrants’ rights. Exclusion of migrant domestic workers from labor laws has created additional vulnerabilities.”[4] The Lebanese Labor Law is supposedly applicable to all workers and employers in Lebanon. However, Article 7 clearly states that the Labor Law excludes foreign domestic workers and the professions they are commonly affiliated with.
In Lebanon, the Ministry of Interior rather than the Ministry of Labor is responsible for managing the MDW’s employment in addition to their sponsor. The destination countries’ governments’ focus is on the costly, bureaucratic flawed restrictive immigration regulations rather than the inherently problematic notion of the migrant workers being tied to a sponsor. This power that the Kafala system grants the sponsors over the migrant workers is very closely associated with slavery, or a more contemporary form of slavery as I will be explaining in the parts to follow.
Central to the Kafala system in and of itself, is the imbalance in power relations between the kafeel and the migrant worker. The kafeel has the power to alter the terms of the employment contract and coerce the migrant worker into submitting to their unfair working conditions without ultimately being held accountable. Amnesty International’s new report entitled “Their Home Is My Prison”: Exploitation of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, demonstrates significant consistencies in the types of abuses towards MDWs.[5] Abuses include “extreme working hours and lack of rest days, severe restrictions on freedom of movement and communication, food deprivation and lack of proper accommodation, verbal and psychological abuse, and physical violence.” To make matters even worse, the Human Rights Watch report in 2010 found that Lebanon’s judiciary consistently fails to hold employers accountable, and security agencies do not “adequately investigate claims of violence or abuse.” Instead, most of these deaths are caused by falls from high buildings during botched escape attempts but are ruled as suicides.[6]
To go beyond mere abstraction, let’s talk names and stories. 938 calls. KAFA received 938 calls in May, reporting instances of domestic abuse, amounting to almost double the calls received in April, and four times as many calls the organization had received in March.[7] Earlier this month, Ethiopian migrant workers were abandoned/dumped by their employers outside the consulate.[8] Many of them have not been paid their monthly wages, or had their belongings and passports stripped from them. On March 14 this year, Faustina Tay was found dead in a car park near her employer’s home in Beirut. Tay was a 23-year-old Ghanaian migrant domestic worker in Lebanon who was allegedly abused by her employers. Only 24 hours before Tay’s body was discovered, she was sending desperate messages to an activist group that helps Kafala workers stuck in the homes of abusive employers in Lebanon.[9] “I don’t want to die here” cried Faustina –there are two Faustina’s per week in Lebanon. Instagram page @thisislebanon961 shares stories of abuse of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon: ‘Slave-owne’r Hiba Bachir Itani tells her MDW “Why do you want to hear from her, my dear? You have to behave yourself if you want to talk to your daughter”. Domestic worker Juvy Anne Apostol says “Madam Thereze sapped me and she beat me. Her husband and her mother also beat me.”[10]
Does this make you uncomfortable? Good. Such is the anti-black, outdated, inhumane and downright vicious modern day slavery: the Kafala system in Lebanon.
Why does Kafala system still exist?
To begin to unpack the reasons as to why Kafala system remains relevant today, it would be useful to shed light on an insensible slogan that circulated on social media when people took to the streets on June 6: “Lebanese lives matter”. Lebanese lives matter. That’s right, the Lebanese did just that. By appropriating this line, we’re diminishing the severity of the BLM movement, and demeaning centuries of oppression, slavery, and death.
Now of course, what the Lebanese are going through is by no means an easy struggle – but it is a completely different struggle. While you may have all the right intentions when saying Lebanese lives matter, you need to acknowledge that appropriating this slogan redirects the attention from the black lives, who are the ones in peril. This is kind of like the difference between racism and anti-blackness, when we lump all lives into one “we’re all in this together” attitude, we’re failing to acknowledge the different dynamics and contexts. People dismissing the problematic nature of the slogan is, in a nutshell, one of the reasons why the system continues to prevail.
Socially, the attitude which Lebanon continues to exhibit and produce is one which occupies a similar discursive space as the colonial era, “a space in which capital and market liberalizations reproduce the same old colonial racial hierarchies”.[11] Hera Syed has argued that “the way certain nationalities are classified are representative of 20th-century British colonial attitudes toward different peoples.”[12] While Syed wrote with respect to the Kafala system in the United Arab Emirates, the argument is also applicable and relatable to Lebanon, where “race and class intersect to create a unique radicalized hierarchy, in which whiteness is considered the optimal and brown and blackness, an unfortunate condition.”
This goes to highlight the anti-blackness emphasized above – the idea that black matters less. It may be difficult to pinpoint the similarities between the racial hierarchy of the French mandate (which categorized French citizens and Lebanese Christians as morally and genetically superior to other brown, mostly Muslim, Arabs) to the racial hierarchy we continue to witness in Lebanon today. However, the system of classification and the general foundation of “categorization” remain prominent, and deeply embedded within our culture.
Economically, the sponsorship system’s main economic objective was to provide temporary, rotating labor that could be rapidly brought into the country in economic boom and expelled during less affluent periods.[13] It is worth noting that the Kafala system does not intentionally seek out brown bodies for enslavement, but rather it is a shapeless force of the market capital which determines where labor will come from. Border regimes and immigration controls provide an almost infinite supply of vulnerable, temporary, and therefore “cheap workers”. This reinforces the idea that the kafeel possesses substantial control (power imbalance) over the worker who is vulnerable and desperate for economic backup, therefore facilitating and justifying the exploitive slave labor. The economic interests of sending and receiving countries remain implicated in the status quo of the Kafala system. However, advocating for “reform” of the Kafala system is based on the assumption that the labor demand for migrant workers will continue, when studies may be showing otherwise.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted in March 2020 that with the COVID-19 pandemic, things got even worse for many migrant workers in Lebanon: "Many employees reported that their employers slashed their salaries," as the Lebanese Pound depreciated. "That's if they paid them at all," comments HRW.[14] Even before the pandemic, as the Lebanese economy was shrinking, HRW reports that the Philippine embassy in Beirut already had 1,000 women register for its free repatriation program in December because they had lost their jobs.[15] Not only does the Kafala system further anti-black agendas, it is also economically unsustainable and unreliable.
A Comparative Approach: What can we learn from other Kafala affiliated countries?
While each and every country is unique in its demographics and dynamics, it would be critical to examine the instructive practices adopted by other countries. To really envision the full scope of practical possibilities worth exploring in Lebanon, I will be mentioning some of the rights-based steps followed by United Kingdom and Qatar.
In the UK, migrant domestic workers must apply to the UK Border Office for an immigration visa under their own name in order to qualify for entry into the country. Each worker fills out her own visa application in her own name. This is significant because it assumes that migrant domestic workers are independent from their employers from the start - even though it is in fact an employer-led visa application process. While the employer must pay the worker’s salary according to the UK’s minimum wage, the employer does not serve as the worker’s “immigration sponsor”. Domestic workers are required to work on a full time basis for one employer, but they are not required to live under the same roof as their employers. If they do, however, the employer is obliged to provide a separate bedroom. In addition, domestic workers may resign freely, and of her own volition without first obtaining the consent of her employer.
When the domestic worker resigns, she/he may simply give one week’s notice and then leave without explanation. In such cases, the employer is not beholden to the UK government in any sort of financial (such as paying for flight tickets) or legal capacity (like reporting resignation to the police or immigration authorities). The UK’s employment-based visa system for migrant domestic workers respects the workers’ rights. The rights-based framework allows the migrant domestic workers to exercise their own agency as independent individuals.[16]
Qatar and its labor laws, on the other hand, have been under the spotlight ever since the country was named the host of the 2022 World Cup. Exit visas for workers – including domestic workers, those in government and public institutions, and workers employed at sea, in agriculture as well as casual workers – have been abolished. These workers have the same rights as all workers in Qatar. The same non-discriminatory law will apply for all workers including migrant domestic workers. Additionally, a new evidence-based minimum wage law that applies to all nationalities is established. This evidence-based minimum wage, is the first of its kind in the Middle East, and will guarantee a minimum level of protection for the domestic workers. Moreover, the abolishment of the No Objection Certificates (NOC) will allow workers to change their jobs without the permission of their employer, following normal contractual commitments.
The new laws that came to effect as of January 2020, aim to bring an end to the Kafala system in Qatar: “exit visas for all workers including domestic workers eliminated; a system of contracts that are transparent and labor courts to enforce them; the end to permission to leave a job, with criteria equivalent to any modern industrial relations system; and a government fund to ensure workers are not disadvantaged by exploitative employers, while the state pursues recovery of entitlements.”[17]
منّا وجرّ: Recommendations, what can be done?
Decouple the employee, employer relationship: As emphasized in this article, a lot of Kafala system problems stem from the power imbalance. Workers must be free to leave the household during their time off and to enjoy vacations, and they should be free to change employers. This also implies that migrant domestic workers must be granted the freedom to live out of the workplace/household if they so choose. In addition, it is important to diminish employers’ sense of legal and financial responsibility for their employees during their stay in the country, which means they shouldn’t be handling any legal or financial responsibilities for “runaway” workers.
Increase labor mobility of migrant domestic workers: This could mean, employment-based visas which allow migrant domestic workers the possibility of terminating their employment contracts, and do not tie a worker exclusively to one individual employer. This could also mean utilizing exit visas and bridge visas, which would respectively permit them to leave the country automatically and would allow undocumented workers to remain in the country for several months.
Ensure social protections and legal recourse mechanisms within the Ministry of Labor: It is important to maintain a system where migrant domestic workers who have disputes with their employers have the right to remain and work in Lebanon. This would involve “conducting regular interviews with workers, investigating workers,’ taking complaints seriously, facilitating the adjudication of labor claims before Labor Tribunals, and offering free legal services to migrant domestic workers.”[18] Workers themselves must have the legal and practical ability to take their employers to court for any sort of abuse, whether large or small. Most importantly, when migrant domestic workers take action and make labor-related grievances, the Ministry of Labor needs to listen attentively, and comply.
Protest, donate, sign petitions, spread awareness, and take action: Anti-blackness is a deep-seated issue in Lebanon, it is so rampant that being racist is socially acceptable. BLM is a movement not a trend, let us embody its message starting from ourselves. Uprisings means time for social, political, and economic reform. It means compliance with human rights. It means screaming their names when we’re fighting the corruption on their streets. Say their names: Faustina Tay and the ever-so many victims of the brutal system, victims whose names we don’t even know. It’s time to have those uncomfortable talks with your aunt and uncle about why they treat their housekeeper the way they do.
It’s time to take humanitarian initiatives: Hala Taher, Joelle El Sheikh, and Annabelle Ghanem, three students at the American University of Beirut, reached out to the manager of a group of migrant workers in a compound in Saudi Arabia to educate them on the dangers of COVID-19, and the precautions they need to take to stay safe. They even provided them with gloves, masks and hand sanitizers – it’s that easy to make a difference. El Sheikh exclusively tells The Phoenix Daily that “although abolishing Kafala is a long-term goal, we can still aim to implement change, one person at a time. It doesn’t take much to treat migrant workers fairly.” It’s time to sign petitions, urging the Lebanese government to take action and to abolish Kafala. Donate to local and international organizations working for domestic workers’ rights. Helpful links:
http://link.thisislbn.org/social
https://linktr.ee/girluplebanon
It’s great that you feel the urge to get involved in the BLM movement. Now that the movement spiked your devotion, you know where to start. Anti-blackness is deeply rooted in our Arab communities, and it wears the outlandishly cheap costume of the Kafala system. Policy makers in Lebanon, especially the Ministry of Labor, should bear the brunt of reversing what they started: modern day slavery. This can include, but is not limited to, involving migrant domestic workers in the labor code, improving social security policies, and instituting minimum wage requirements among other considerations. As for you, the responsibility falls on your shoulders to shed light on, and keep insisting until we get somewhere, until our people quit feeling racially superior because they’re just not.
If you’re posting a black square box, I hope you’re also donating, signing petitions, protesting, reading, educating those around you, calling out racism, questioning yourself and getting uncomfortable while doing it. I understand that I will never be able to understand this completely, but the least I can do is try, because no one is meant to fight this unjust fight on their own.
[1] Ross, Kihana Miraya. Call It What It Is: Anti-Blackness. 4 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opinion/george-floyd-anti-blackness.html.
[2] “We Want Justice for Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon.” Amnesty International, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/04/lebanon-migrant-domestic-workers-their-house-is-our-prison/.
[3] Ibid.
[4] file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/situation-report-international-migration-2019-english.pdf
[5] “We Want Justice for Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon.” Amnesty International, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/04/lebanon-migrant-domestic-workers-their-house-is-our-prison/.
[6] Wallis, Emma. “Slavery and Suicide: Plight of Migrant Maids in Lebanon Made More Stark by Pandemic.” InfoMigrants, 3 June 2020, www.infomigrants.net/en/post/25140/slavery-and-suicide-plight-of-migrant-maids-in-lebanon-made-more-stark-by-pandemic.
[7] Megaphone, megaphonenews. "Cases of domestic violence multiply in Lebanon". Instagram, June 5, https://www.instagram.com/p/CBDlC5bKF98/?igshid=1ojef0r7vjbui
[8] Rose, Sunniva. “Ethiopian Domestic Workers Abandoned on Beirut Street by Employers.” The National, The National, 6 June 2020, www.thenational.ae/world/mena/ethiopian-domestic-workers-abandoned-on-beirut-street-by-employers-1.1029708.
[9] Lewis, Lauren. “After Faustina Tay's Death, Time Is up for the Kafala System in Lebanon.” Middle East Monitor, 27 Mar. 2020, www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200327-after-faustina-tays-death-time-is-up-for-the-kafala-system-in-lebanon/.
[10] This Is Lebanon, thisislebanon961, Instagram, https://instagram.com/thisislebanon961?igshid=1ht4vm6xgpb9j
[11] Madan, Aman. “The Kafala System Is How Capitalism Is Driving Modern Slavery.” The Wire,
thewire.in/labour/understand-the-kafala-system-or-how-capitalism-is-driving-modern-slavery.
[12] Ibid.
[13] For more information, check out International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Policy Brief No. 2: REFORM OF THE KAFALA (SPONSORSHIP) SYSTEM: https://www.ilo.org/dyn/migpractice/docs/132/PB2.pdf
[14] Wallis, Emma. “Slavery and Suicide: Plight of Migrant Maids in Lebanon Made More Stark by Pandemic.” InfoMigrants, 3 June 2020, www.infomigrants.net/en/post/25140/slavery-and-suicide-plight-of-migrant-maids-in-lebanon-made-more-stark-by-pandemic.b
[15] Ibid.
[16] For more information on UK’s MDW policies and regulations, check KAFA policy paper on alternatives to the sponsorship system for migrant domestic workers (23-26) https://www.kafa.org.lb/sites/default/files/2019-02/Reforming_JKafalaSystemLeb_0.pdf
[17] “Qatar Dismantles Kafala System of Modern Slavery.” Qatar Dismantles Kafala System of Modern Slavery, 16 Oct. 2019, www.ituc-csi.org/qatar-dismantles-kafala.
[18] For an in-depth understanding of this recommendation in particular, check out KAFA policy paper on alternatives to the sponsorship system for migrant domestic workers (7) https://www.kafa.org.lb/sites/default/files/2019-02/Reforming_JKafalaSystemLeb_0.pdf