Lebanon: Report finds migrant domestic workers from Sierra Leone subject to forced labour & trafficking, incl. by Lebanese recruitment agencies
On 30 July 2024, Migrant Workers’ Action released a report, titled “From False Promises to Forced Labour: The Journey of Migrant Domestic Workers from Sierra Leone to Lebanon”, exploring the migration of Sierra Leonean domestic workers to Lebanon and the human and labour rights risks they face.
The report found all the workers interviewed were victims of forced labour by both international and national standards, and many of the workers were also victims of trafficking. It highlights how Lebanon’s Kafala system catalyses these risks and limits workers’ access to justice.
The report is based on interviews with migrants who travelled to Lebanon for work, with data collection and analysis conducted by Migrant-Rights.Org, and with Domestic Workers Advocacy Network and World Hope International facilitating access to returnee workers. The families of three migrants, civil society organisations, government stakeholders, and one recruitment agent were also interviewed.
Structural vulnerabilities in Sierra Leone contribute to heightening the risk of exploitation by deceptive recruiters, and the Kafala System provides a framework that allows for widespread abuses, including forced labour.Migrant Workers' Action, "FROM FALSE PROMISES TO FORCED LABOUR: THE JOURNEY OF MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS FROM SIERRA LEONE TO LEBANON"
The report begins by exploring the journey from Sierra Leone to Lebanon, emphasising how extreme poverty, the impact of the civil war, health crises, and other compounding challenges have made women workers susceptible to exploitation by traffickers. The report underlines how the potential to earn considerably higher incomes abroad means workers pay high recruitment charges and sell their assets to do so.
The report explores a lack of oversight on the actions of recruiters in Sierra Leone, with “no signs of registered agents” recruiting workers, no formal pre-departure offers, and no signed contracts. Most workers interviewed paid fees for their jobs to an agent. Agents used deceptive practices, including workers being promised jobs in offices only to arrive to domestic worker jobs.
Once in Lebanon, the report emphasises how the fact the Kafala system ties workers’ employment to a particular sponsoring employer allows the “proliferation of human rights abuses”. Rights violations experienced by interviewed workers include wage theft, employers withholding passports, denial of contracts, no room to sleep in, sexual abuse, and workers facing arrest and deportation for leaving abusive householders, among other severe human rights violations.
The report also emphasises how recruitment agencies in destination are neither monitored nor regulated, “except to serve the needs of the employers”, leading to workers being moved from household to household, and being subjected to abuse, forced labour, and trafficking.