Last month was particularly deadly for young Asian and African women employed by Lebanese families as domestic help.
On Oct. 8, a Nepalese woman named Sunit Bholan committed suicide. A week later, a 23-year-old Ethiopian woman named Kassaye Etsegenet jumped to her death from the 7th floor of an apartment building in Beirut. Five days after that, the body of another Ethiopian, Zeditu Kebede Matente, 26, was found hanging from an olive tree.
Five other women died before the end of October, two more Ethiopians, another Nepalese maid, and two women from Madagascar, according to a report this week from the Beirut office of Human Rights Watch. That's a total of eight in one month.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling on the Lebanese government to investigate the "disproportionately high death rate among this group of workers," according to a news release. An estimated 200,000 domestic workers, primarily from Sri Lanka, work in Lebanon. Last year, HRW published a study showing that migrant domestic workers were dying at a rate of more than one a week in Lebanon.
The rate of suicides and mysterious fatal falls apparently is worrying governments with high numbers of workers in Lebanon.
A diplomat for a country from which one of the dead women came told HRW: "These women are under pressure, with no means to go away. Their passports are seized and they are often locked away in their employer's house. It is like they are living in a cage. Human beings need to mingle with others; otherwise they lose their will to live."
Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, it's common for middle- and upper-class families to employ housemaids, gardeners, nannies and doormen. Their pay is low, but enough to support the domestic workers' families back home in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Eritrea and the Philippines.
While many families treat their hired help as in any employer-worker relationship, with time off for home visits and set working hours, abuses have become so frequent that human rights groups are calling for greater legal protection and more government enforcement of existing labor laws.
Without reforms, many domestic workers will remain vulnerable and trapped, modern-day slaves.
Once i saw how lebanese family having its lunch in restaraunt. There was a 11-12 years old girl from sri lanka with them. Obviusly she was taking take of one of the toddler. They were eating while this girl was sitting aside and looking to them. No sign of abuse, but scene was absolutely disgusting. I have travelled a lot but such attitude towards workers from other countries i have seen only in the middle east ( lebanon and UAE).
Posted by: Dina | November 14, 2009 at 03:25 AM
This attitude of slave labor is endemic in the muslim world. If you don't have cash they treat you like dirt and than call westeners with their human right values servants of satan.
Posted by: mfellion | November 16, 2009 at 07:56 PM
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Posted by: Nick Matyas | January 06, 2010 at 03:24 PM