Geneva Institute for Human Rights

United Nations Special Rapporteur Gulnara Shahinian urged the Government of Lebanon to enact legislation to protect some 200,000 domestic workers in the country. Currently without legal protection, she said, some of them end up living in domestic servitude, under absolute control and dependency on their employers.

“Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, the majority of whom are women, are legally invisible, which makes them acutely vulnerable to domestic servitude,” said the UN expert monitoring contemporary forms of slavery following her first visit to the country. “I met with women who had been forced to work long hours without any remuneration or valid contract; physically and sexually abused; and morally harassed by constantly being insulted, humiliated and belittled.”

Lebanese efforts to address the problem have so far fallen far short, said Shahinian. While the government has established a hotline for migrant workers, formed a national steering committee, and developed a standard contract, a possible law outlining rights for domestic workers has lingered in draft form for three years. Further, the draft fails to ensure that migrant domestic workers are allowed to keep their passports and to guarantee them freedom of movement, a day off outside the employers’ house, adequate private lodging, and fair wages.

Shahinian called on Lebanese lawmakers to write those provisions into the law, along with provisions establishing criteria for how potential employers and recruitment agencies are to conduct their work and be monitored. “Currently, the visa regime is such that if a domestic worker leaves an employer, she immediately breaks the law," she said. "In the case of a domestic worker held in domestic servitude, she is, as a result, treated as a criminal instead of a victim of human rights violations.”