Kefala is the Fire

On owning a human being in Lebanon

The Kefala system violates the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document to which Lebanon is a signatory.

“Lebanon … abides by … the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Government shall embody these principles in all fields and areas without exception.”

- Preamble, Lebanese Constitution

As of October 17, 2019, the Lebanese people are in full revolt against their government. The prime minister has resigned, and the protesters have a list of demands.

Ending the Kefala system of human trafficking is not on the list.

Kefala is the Arabic word for “sponsorship”. It is an insidious system whereby the oversight of migrant worker rights is extricated from labor ministries and diverted into the unregulated hands of private citizens across the Middle East. In effect, this translates to an egregious lack of accountability.

The line between migrating and trafficking is blurred with underhanded promises of fair work and good pay.

Upon arrival, the workers have no idea that they will have no legal recourse, and human lives are left to the whims of people who are not beholden to oversight. Sponsors (Kefeel) do not file reports, and they are not held accountable for working conditions or even food, bedding and sanitation.

Domestic workers cannot access proper channels to file grievances, thus, abuses are not reported. As such, the Kefala system violates the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document to which Lebanon is a signatory.

Migrant workers arrive in Lebanon with contracts and legal work permits,yet the labor laws exclude them. Without exception, the mostly young women of this invisible subgroup come from struggling or defunct economies. The line between migrating and trafficking is blurred with underhanded promises of fair work and good pay.

At Beirut International Airport, migrant domestic workers are not offered water or food. They sit on the floor until their papers are verified.

My husband and I waited for three hours to get Hana’s paperwork processed. Then, we brought her home. We talked a little in the car, but bewilderment kept her eyes out the window, watching the packed urban hive of the coast break up into the foothills of Mount Lebanon.

From the first day of her work, Hana has called me “Mom”. I wanted to correct her, but it was so endearing I didn’t bother. In any case, ever since we arrived in Lebanon nearly ten years ago, I have been a tentative Kefeel, silently owning another human being.

“Don’t leave this ring here. The maid will steal it.”

Teta Hafiza, my husband’s mother, is eighty-nine and spry. She is generous to a fault and loves with her whole heart. She still cooks our meals and scales the stairs down to the garden to water, to prune, to admire fifty years of cherries, roses and laurel.

She holds onto old, broken credenzas, vanity tables and wardrobes which lumber in the dim corners of our home like old, weather-beaten veterans. Every shelf, door and crack therein is lain with Catholic kitsch: Saints Maron, Stephen and Charbel on prints and on prayer cards; the Virgin forged in ceramic, in glow-in-the-dark plastic, as a lamp. Her altar is festooned with rosaries. She keeps plastic bottles of holy water in the liquor cabinet. She plays mass on television every day.

She grew up in a Lebanon where people had to use outhouses in the freezing mountain winters, and men drove horse-drawn carts to deliver fuel to houses. She is a living vessel of history.

She also embodies a microcosm of a deep and puzzling racism and classism which permeate Lebanon to its core. On the one hand is her good friend Hassan, the Sudanese gardener who manages the property next door. He brings her fresh fruits and vegetables from his garden. She sparkles when she sees him.

On the other hand is her mercurial relationship with any of the migrant domestic workers who have taken care of our home since 2010: Suma from Nepal, Kabé from Ethiopia, and now Hana, also from Ethiopia. With them she is smiling one minute and angered the next. Everyone in her generation agrees: migrant domestic workers are not to be trusted.

“Don’t leave this ring here,” she once warned. “The maid will steal it.”

Hana and I are both expats living and working here in Lebanon. Beyond that, the similarities between us come to a screeching halt. I’ve quit four different jobs in nine years of life here. I quit and walked away. No one confiscated my passport, arrested me, fined my employer, or deported me. I leave the country freely every year to see my family and friends in Texas.

Police officers don’t follow me around suspicious of my status. My dignity is intact when I shop, go swimming, or drive a car, and if it isn’t, I have the freedom to disentangle myself from undesirable situations. For the one hundred thousand Ethiopian migrant workers in my adopted country, the reality is poles apart.

Lebanon has a net gain of one person every eighteen minutes due to the Syrian Civil War, which has strained every population statistic for the last five years. More than two million refugees have swarmed through the porous border along the Anti-Libanus Mountains.

Years on, Assad’s dismal failure to present a positive economic valence to his diaspora has left Lebanon to be the keepers of the strewn masses. In the four o’clock hour of a steamy day in August 2016, Hana Zepraga joined this dense sea of more than six million people living on the Levantine coast. She brought a small bag of clothing and some hope.

Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

- Article 5, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Minimum wage in Lebanon is 450 USD per month. It’s impossible for the Lebanese and hosted expatriates to build an independent existence here on such a number. For migrant workers; however, this would be a life-changing salary. Unfortunately, the most fundamental and mendacious characteristic of the Kefala system is that it systemically feeds on the poverty of subordinate nations.

Domestic workers are excluded from the country’s minimum wage law and will earn a wage 50% to 60% below minimum. Most of that money winds up as a remittance contribution to the worker’s home country. As of 2018, more than 1% of Ethiopia’s GDP was foreign remittances, and it was as high as 3.5% in 2014. Most maids don’t openly complain about the pay. They live under the precept that it’s better than the pay at home, so the host country feels no pressure to treat them fairly.

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.

- Article 13, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The confiscation of migrant passports is normal practice in Lebanon. At the airport, a security agent handed us an envelope containing all of Hana’s paperwork, including her passport. Hana was silent. She didn’t read or speak Arabic. She had never been educated on the topic of her own human rights. She didn’t protest. In effect, upon arrival, migrant workers are stripped of their right to free movement.

The Lebanese, not disingenuously, filter the confiscation of papers through a kaleidoscope of cultural values, and it comes out the other end looking like benevolence.

“Where is Hana’s paperwork?” I asked one day while packing for our trip to the United States. I had planned this conversation. It would be the first time in nine years that I would attempt to secure our maid’s passport and work permit into her own hands.

Because of the precepts of the Kafala system, a migrant with her own passport is a ‘flight risk’, and if she flees and ‘commits a crime’, the employer is supposedly held to account.

Lebanese Kefeel (sponsors) keep the maid’s passport to protect themselves from the system. It is a rooted norm, and at previous times when I have sallied into the topic, I’ve been met with strong rebuke. A maid should never have access to her papers. The Lebanese, not disingenuously, filter the confiscation of papers through a kaleidoscope of cultural values, and it comes out the other end looking like benevolence.

“It’s down in the truck,” Anthony responded. He didn’t protest when I said Hana needed to have her file before our departure. He was preoccupied. I don’t think he absorbed what I had said. A week or ten days went by, so I asked about the papers again.

“Why do you want them?” he queried, conscious this time. “They’re perfectly safe in the car.”

“We’re leaving,” I began my planned retort. “If something were to happen, she needs her own papers to move around.”

Hana didn’t understand why she should have possession of her own papers.

“If something happens, Gilbert (our cousin) has the keys to the car.”

“If something happens, Gilbert may not be around,” I countered. “What if there is an earthquake? A horrible car crash?” I continued to list all of the unlikely scenarios I could muster while treading on the edge of my own indignation.

“She can’t do anything without my signature anyway.” **

“It doesn’t matter. The papers are hers,” I argued. I had dropped the bomb. It didn’t matter if nothing happened while we were gone. We had no right to keep her papers.

He placed her file onto my desk. I sat Hana down and told her I was giving her papers back to her permanently. My giddiness quickly took a nosedive.

“Why?” she asked.

She didn’t understand why she should have possession of her own papers.

Migrants who resort to escaping from their employers wind up nationless, hiding and working in Lebanon illegally.

Hana, as our employee, should tell someone in the house if she needs to leave. In the context of an employee/boss relationship, this isn’t abnormal on the surface, but if she wanted to quit, she couldn’t do so of her own free will. She can’t quit and carry on with her life unless her sponsor is willing to give up her documents.

In ‘hiring’ a maid, sponsors are independently responsible for two to three thousand dollars in acquisition fees plus air fare. An on-the-ground example of debt bondage, many maids do not receive a salary until their pay equals these fees, which can take more than a year.

Migrants who resort to escaping from their employers wind up nationless, hiding and working in Lebanon illegally. Many are held hostage because an employer will not relinquish their iqama — residency papers. They are trapped here and cannot leave the country.

Why Are Sri Lankans, Philippines and Ethiopians in Lebanon Anyway?

From around the 1920’s until the Civil War (1975–1990), domestic workers in Lebanon were Kurds, Palestinians, Egyptians or Lebanese themselves. This employment of Arabs within Lebanese households carried the trappings of a patron-client relationship, one of work in exchange for nurturing.

Girls as young as twelve were offered into servitude by poorer, Arab families. The wealthier family employed the girl, often for years, raising her, educating her and supporting her until marriage. A salary was not the status quo, but rather protection and a leg up to go to school and marry into better circumstances.

After 1948, Palestinian refugees became a prominent domestic labor force in Lebanon as families began to tap into the social network of refugee camps. In all cases of Arab domestic servitude, the Lebanese held to a deep, filial culture in which both parties were treated with respect. This paradigm functioned with imported labor as well as labor coming from within one’s own family. For example, a relative with a deceased husband would often move into a cousin’s house to work in exchange for shelter and the education of her children.

As the Lebanese social and political structure fell apart (during the Civil War), Christians no longer trusted Shi’a or Druze in their homes. Sunnis would not employ Shi’a, and on and on it went, until the labor force collapsed, and the Arab patron-client relationship came to a halt.

Alawites from Syria, a rich labor pool due in part to minority status, worked for and were adopted into wealthy, Lebanese households until Hafez el Assad took power in the 1960s. Once at the controls, Assad’s Alawite heritage meant the labor faucet was shut off, and ‘young women were redirected into the developing manufacturing industries.’

Egyptian teens and young women were of great influx during the agreements between Syria and Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s, and they were often lured from the bars of the city center to work in households, an existence which promised better security from exploitation and sex trafficking.

The traditional Lebanese system of domestic work came crumbling down with the onslaught of the Civil War in 1975. A Palestinian refugee, once cooperative, might change her attitude toward her employers as she became instilled with a sense of pride. Likewise, as the Lebanese social and political structure fell apart, Christians no longer trusted Shi’a or Druze in their homes. Sunnis would not employ Shi’a, and on and on it went, until the labor force collapsed, and the Arab patron-client relationship came to a halt.

It didn’t take long for Lebanese entrepreneurs to profit from the vacuum. Early in the war, recruiters began bringing Sri Lankans into the Lebanese labor pool for domestic work. Philippines and Ethiopians followed near the end of the conflict.

But these workers weren’t subject to the Arab tradition of filial ties. Lebanese households quickly adjusted, and young women came to the country in droves, women who were not to be raised and educated, but only put to work.

Hana’s daily effervescence and dedication to my family belie the ugly circumstances which delivered her to Lebanon three years ago. A former student at Dagmawi Minilik Health Science College in Addis Ababa, she spent her youth wanting to be a nurse, but her expedient manner and commitment to her studies could not compete with a debilitating illness which left her father bedridden.

With no one else to adequately care for him, Hana strained herself between school and home. Predictably, she began to struggle in her coursework. After three years of study, she couldn’t pass the national examination. Her father survived, but the damage had been done. Hana’s career in nursing was snuffed out before it began.

She worked with an uncle and tried other means to support herself, but these jobs brought little satisfaction. In a country where 30% of the population live below the poverty line, Hana was staring down the barrel of earning at or less than 600 USD per year.

Ethiopia is hailed as an economic miracle baby (experiencing a growth rate of 10% for more than ten years), but the marginalized private sector has not caught up with the trend, and rural areas have been left out. With a median age of only eighteen, Ethiopia looks more like a snag than a safe haven, so her people leave the country seeking opportunity elsewhere. Hana joined the ranks of this emigrati and began to look for work outside of her homeland.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

- Article 24, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Lebanese housework is still conducted in an early twentieth-century model. The electrical grid cannot support the use of modern equipment like vacuum cleaners, large capacity washing machines and electric dryers.

Rugs, weighing more than a hundred pounds when wet, are still washed and beaten by hand. Though many families have adopted modern washing machines, laundry is still often done in old-fashioned tub washers and, in any case, almost exclusively hung to dry. The tile floors, which sprawl through any house, are still mopped with a squeegee and soaked towels, with the water being pushed out of the house through floor drains and outdoor sluices.

Kefala doesn’t just cater to wealthy families. Middle class Lebanese and expatriates take advantage of imported labor as well.

Gardening tools are rudimentary, and soil is still turned with nothing more than manpower and a rusted pitch fork. The homes of thousands of families are made of stone and plaster, which quickly attract dust and bugs, and drainage systems are often hobbled by age and wear, resulting in back-ups and aggressive odors. As such, Kefala doesn’t just cater to wealthy families. Middle class Lebanese and expatriates take advantage of imported labor as well.

“Hana needs a weekly day off,” I tell my husband.

“What the hell would she do?” he replies.

That’s the Lebanese mentality in a nutshell. I have wondered if Hana would accept a day off every week. She might not want it. She might go nuts in such an idle state. Either way, it’s really none of my business what she would do. This endemic assumption of what maids need is among Kefala’s greatest subterfuges.

Maids in Lebanon serve coffee three to five times per day; stay up late to cater to parties and clean up; wake up early to care for kids; serve as nursing assistants for the elderly and expend hours of energy on tough, seasonal chores.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment

- Article 5, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Upon entering a maid recruitment agency, pictures of healthy, happy maids in clean, candy-striped uniforms adorn the walls. Agents are matter-of-fact on the hierarchy: Sri Lankans and Ethiopians cost 150 USD per month, while Philippine women are more expensive — 200 USD. The man at the desk hands out profiles containing information and work history.

I remember the first time we hired a maid in 2010. My husband brought home four files of different women — with photographs. The conversations around these dossiers were appalling: People openly critique that Sri Lankans are stupid, Nepalese will run away, maids who’ve worked in Saudi Arabia are mentally unstable, and Ethiopians are sluts and will get pregnant.

Employers in Lebanon have withheld food and pay from domestic workers, routinely taken advantage of them, physically and sexually abused them, and robbed them of their dignity in public and private.

Family members warned us that the maid should wear a uniform, that we should not let her choose. She should wear the apron to protect her clothing was the wording used to disguise the social demand that her status be marked.

Our first maid, Suma, from Nepal, took one look at that uniform in 2010 and gestured in no uncertain terms that she would not wear it.

Maids are often shuttled to the domiciles of other family members. Hana works for us and not for extended family. She should never have to clean an aunt’s summer home or serve guests at a party at someone else’s house, and yet the culture here steamrolls any protest, and off she goes. Many maids are paid by family members for this extra work, but it is not guaranteed. Upon her return, I try to tell her to rest for the remainder of the day.

She shrugs it off, and we laugh because we can’t communicate at the intricate levels necessary to say what really needs to be said. Every time Hana confides in me, she tells me with a smile. She shares her indignation dressed as a joke.

In countries ravaged by poverty and instability, people find a way out. These women are so desperate to escape the frying pan that they’ll blindly jump into the fire.

It’s on record with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that employers in Lebanon have withheld food and pay from domestic workers, routinely taken advantage of them, physically and sexually abused them, and robbed them of their dignity in public and private.

One day, my husband’s sister arrived to her Beirut apartment with groceries. She encountered a maid who worked for the downstairs neighbors. The young woman gestured inward to her belly, and raised her fingers to her open mouth. Out of desperation for food, this young girl in a clean, pink apron risked her own well-being by contacting an outsider.

In twenty-first century Lebanon, migrant workers aren’t allowed to swim in the pools.

My sister-in-law, who also employs migrant workers, spent weeks sneaking food to the maid, at once feeding her and quietly protecting her from the wrath of her sponsors. She embodies this multifarious aspect of a typical Lebanese sponsor: she would not confront the maid’s employers, but instead took quiet action to right a wrong, if only temporarily, in real time.

The maid rides in the back seat of the car, even if the sponsor is driving alone. The whims of children routinely trump the respect of the maid, and society at large deems domestic workers unclean. At Aquamarina II, an upscale, waterfront complex of condominiums on the Tabarja coast, I lay in the sun, watching a group of maids playing with Lebanese toddlers in the water while the parents lounged. At least they are in the pool, I thought. And they have the camaraderie of each other.

It wasn’t for long. A manager approached and ordered them out of the water. In twenty-first century Lebanon, migrant workers aren’t allowed to swim in the pools. No one bats an eye. It is perfectly normal to ban migrant workers from pools and restaurants, force them to sleep on porches and in closets, and physically and verbally abuse them for making a mistake or for getting firm with a misbehaving child.

Everyone has the right to peaceful assembly, to take part in the government, and to unionize.

- Articles 20, 21 and 23, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On December 29, 2014, six migrant workers presented former Minister of Labor Sejaan Azzi with a request to form a union. A few weeks later, in January 2015, around 350 house maids gathered for a planned, inaugural event, one overshadowed by Azzi’s refusal to ratify the new group and his subsequent threat to unleash Lebanese Security Forces on the event to break up the union’s establishment.

Though still not recognized by the Labor Ministry, the Domestic Workers Union (DWU) wedges itself into the conversation on Lebanese human rights and is overlooked as long as migrants are joining the union but not leading it.

Because of its inherent limitations, a splinter group called the Alliance broke off in 2016. Its decisions are made unanimously by domestic workers who refuse to be relegated to what they see as passive participants.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

- Article 9, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Under the Ministry of Interior, Lebanon’s General Security is charged with entry and residency status. It admitted in 2014 to having put forth a new ordinance denying residency permit renewals to children born in Lebanon of low-wage migrants.

General Security continued to summon domestic workers, who upon arrival were detained and told they weren’t allowed to have children in Lebanon.

The mass deportations starting in 2015 included mothers who had worked in Lebanon for decades. It stripped children from school, disrupted livelihoods, and separated families. Women and children landed in “home” countries where they had no ties, no employment prospects, and no food security.

NGO’s were relentless in requesting a copy of this new directive. Their demands fell on deaf ears. General Security continued to summon domestic workers, who upon arrival were detained and told they weren’t allowed to have children in Lebanon.

General Security representatives then wrote to Human Rights Watch, stating that a migrant worker giving birth to a child in Lebanon would be “difficult to achieve without violating many laws and regulations” and “the persistence of violations of applicable laws in any country would set its inevitable outcome on the transgressor.”

The transgressor.

Roja Limbu and Sujana Rana had legal residence and work permits in Lebanon. They were instrumental in the formation of the Lebanese Domestic Workers Union in January of 2015 and openly protested in the streets with hundreds of other workers.

A rising tide of justice was swarming the Kefala system, and NGOs like the International Labor Organization, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stepped up documenting and publishing worker abuse. In the week between November 30th and December 5th, 2016, both women were arrested (Roja by plain-clothed men) and detained.

Without recourse, and after Lebanon had racked up a ledger of violations of international law, Sujana was deported, on International Migrants Day, after more than two weeks in prison.

According to the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (LCHR), women do not have exclusive prisons. Women are kept in separate units from men, but are not sexually and personally secure.

More than half of (women) are tortured. They are sexually abused by investigators and guards. All the security services have female staff, yet interrogations, surveillance and searches are conducted by male guards.

In June 2013, Human Rights Watch observed:

Women who are suspected of taking drugs, or of prostitution, are subjected to further sexual violence, from rape to sexual intercourse, in exchange for “favors” (cigarettes, food, more comfortable cell conditions, and more lenient police reports).

More than 60% of Lebanon’s prison inmates are in pre-trial detention. They are not separated from the convicted population. Men and women in the jails suffer from unsanitary conditions, poor ventilation, violence, horrible food, isolation and corruption. It was into this environment that Roja and Sujana were tossed.

They were forced into cells crowded with men to await processing. Neither was told why she’d been arrested. Both were interrogated about their work with the DWU. Both were refused access to a telephone and a lawyer.

There were no case workers, psychiatrists, or counselors. Without recourse, and after Lebanon had racked up a ledger of violations of international law, Sujana was deported, on International Migrants Day, after more than two weeks in prison.

Roja was held long after, to the point that Freedom United submitted a petition with 55, 000 signatures demanding her release. After fifty-five days in jail, she was also deported. Twenty-one organizations have come down on the Lebanese government, and the Ministries of Labor and Justice have new leaders, but no change has been detected.*

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

- Article 3, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

As of 2019, it is estimated that domestic workers in Lebanon lose their lives at a rate of two per week. The deaths have been Sri Lankans, Philippines, Nepalese and Ethiopians, countries with no leverage, and the reaction has been thunderously silent.

In Lebanon, Kuwait and the Gulf States, migrant worker suicides are covered up with fraudulent death certificates. Abuses and violations have no official statistics from the Labor Ministry. Complaints of these workers’ rights go unrecorded because domestic workers do not have a legal voice.

Madagascar, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Nepal have banned migration to the Middle East, but in countries ravaged by poverty and instability, people find a way out. These women are so desperate to escape the frying pan that they’ll blindly jump into the fire.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is enshrined in the preamble of the Lebanese Constitution, solidifying its principles as ‘constitutionally compulsory with supremacy over the national legislation.’

The Ministry of Labor introduced Lebanon’s Unified Standard Contract in 2009. It is explicit in prohibiting an employer from forcing a worker to work outside the home (for instance working all day at home and then all night at the employer’s shop). It restricts working hours to ten per day, with at least eight continuous hours of rest at night.

It also entitles the worker to a 24-hour weekly rest period, paid sick leave and six days of annual leave. The provision of health insurance is mandated and the worker is to be allowed to receive calls. Plus, the employer agrees to cover the cost of one phone call to her family per month.

The Unified Standard Contract is a paper tiger.

Lebanon’s migrant workers have likely signed this document but are not aware of its contents. As with all things Kafala, if you go to the website for the Ministry of Labor, the whole thing is in Arabic, and translation mechanisms are ineffective.

An English site is available with a contact number for complaints and a hotline, but no one mans the complaint line, and the hotline is out of service. None of this squares with the lingual diversity among migrant workers who speak dozens of languages other than English or Arabic. Visitors can click on services for ‘foreigners’, but the page only displays a desultory list of codes and numbers.

Migrant workers in Lebanon struggle in the no man’s land between the deeply entrenched Kefala system and the world’s NGOs — the former an accepted platform fostering racism, classism, abuse and slavery, the latter a consortium who have to fight daily to secure the most basic human rights.

Now, our Hana keeps her own papers. In August, she left our home to see her family for a month. It was the first time in three years that she was free of Kefala. She returned to us of her own accord, a salve over my own complicity as an operator within the Kefala system. All the same, she still had to return, a pointed judgment over the sprawling, global economic status quo which enables Kefala to exist in the first place.

*Post note: The current Minister of Labor, Camille Abousleiman, was meeting with NGOs and looking for ways to reform the Kafala system. Mr. Abousleiman resigned within one week of the onset of the Lebanese Revolution (October 17, 2019). He operates in a caretaker status and is likely not pursuing new policy.

• *Migrant workers no longer need a signature to leave the country. They must have a passport and iqama.