What’s Being Done for Ethiopian – and Other – Domestic Workers in Lebanon

In my post the other day, about the Ethiopian funeral in Sebtiyeh on Sunday, I mentioned that some officials from the Ethiopian Consulate here in Beirut stopped by to pay their respects and distribute their personal mobile numbers. Yesterday, I called one of those numbers, and was pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of Asaminew Debeli, the General Consul from Ethiopia, on the other end of the line.

Debeli is new to Lebanon — he arrived here just six months ago — something that may be reflected in the general optimism he exudes about changing the situation for his countrymen here. The past few weeks, he said, had been entirely consumed with dealing with the aftermath of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 409, in which 24 Ethiopian nationals perished. The crash, of course, was a quite separate matter from the deep-seated problems facing domestic workers here, but it did have the effect of casting extra light on the problem, both from the media and from Lebanese officials. (Prime Minister Saad Hariri, for one, visited the Ethiopian Consulate last week to pay his respects.)

Regarding the broader issue of domestic worker abuse and rights, Debeli told me that the process was moving along. “We are doing our best, but this problem is a longstanding problem, we cannot fix it overnight, ” he said. He added, “All of the leadership of the government is in a positive mindset” about making the necessary changes.

Advocates for domestic worker rights here in Lebanon, who have fought this uphill battle for many years, are not so optimistic. In Beirut, perhaps no one has worked as tirelessly to advance the rights of foreign domestic workers than Nadim Houry, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Lebanon. As Houry and others have explained it, there are two fundamental issues at work. The first is psychological — changing the attitude of some Lebanese, particularly those of the older generations, toward their household employees. The other is far more mundane — and, perhaps, more important: the need to change Lebanon’s legal protections for workers. As it stands, Lebanon’s labor laws explicitly exclude domestic workers from their minimum pay and time off requirements, and efforts to create alternative protections — such as through extralegal contracts between worker and employer — have had mixed results, at best.

Houry is Lebanese, and so are many of the other advocates in Beirut who have worked on this issue. The effort sometimes gets a bad rap as being driven by outsiders and Westerners, but this does not appear to be a fair assessment. When I asked Houry, recently, to point me to some other particularly involved Lebanese, he mentioned Najla Chahda, who runs Caritas Lebanon’s Center for Migrants, and Roland Tawk, a local lawyer who has taken on many migrants-rights cases.

Meanwhile, Houry’s group is responsible for a powerful investigation into domestic worker suicides which found, in August 2008, that an average of more than one domestic worker was killing herself every week.

Houry also pointed me, needless to say, to a Facebook page: Support the Rights of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon. Check it out, when you get a chance.