Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that some 200.000 domestic workers from Asian and African countries like the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, and Nepal, arrive in Beirut with little idea where they will be employed, informs Alhazeera.net Monday.
Najla Shahda, of Caritas Lebanon, part of a global humanitarian network, believes that migrant workers go through similar problems throughout the Middle East.
– Agencies are recruiting them in their countries of origin and they are not explaining to them what their rights are and if they run into a problem, they are not telling them how they can communicate with their embassies, Shahda said.
Employment agencies usually draw up contracts which fall short of existing labour standards and fail to secure migrant workers’ rights.
As a result, advocacy groups say, many end up in abusive situations.
The UN estimates that there are 100 million migrant workers in the world. Of these, 50 per cent are women, and some 70 million are considered “unskilled”. They send 397bn US dollar in remittances back home.
In a 1998 review of human rights abuses around the world, the UN raised alarm that foreign workers in Lebanon had their passports confiscated.
The situation does not appear to have improved since then.
