Lebanon: Human trafficking

Abbey was a nurse at a French hospital in Madagascar when a recruitment agency suggested to her boss that she travel to Lebanon for three years to work and learn Arabic so she could better care for the Arab sailors whose ships docked at the Indian Ocean island. Abbey, not her real name, was presented by the recruitment agent with a three-year contract, which included transport to the Lebanese hospital, and a salary of US$1,000 per month. On arrival there, however, she was put in a house with another Madagascan domestic worker where she was forced to cook, clean and care for three children and a newborn. They didn’t sleep day or night; they had to be up whenever the baby cried. They didn’t even have time to shower or eat during the day because they were always rocking him so he didn’t cry. It was like that for two and a half years.
Politicians are also involved in this issue and it goes underground, which is why it’s difficult to get laws to protect these women. From her salary of just $150 a month, Abbey said she had to give her Lebanese employer money to buy food for her: “So basically, we were working for free.” Cases like Abbey’s are not uncommon in Lebanon, which is a country of destination for women trafficked from Africa, Sri Lanka and the Philippines for the purpose of domestic labour. In June, Lebanon was added to the US State Department’s human trafficking tier 2 watch list for its failure to protect victims of trafficking or to prosecute those responsible.