Soleti*, an Ethiopian migrant domestic worker living in Lebanon, says she feels lucky to be alive. She was not home when Israeli airstrikes hit buildings in her neighborhood in the southern Lebanese city of Tire on September 23.
“It was a genocide,” the 34-year-old said from the house where she was evacuated with dozens of fellow African immigrants, including children. “They just attacked an apartment where old people and children live. They are okay, but they seem to have lost a little hearing. The children here are scared of nightmares and can’t sleep,” she told Al Jazeera. Ta.
Soleti is one of an estimated 175,000 to 200,000 foreign domestic workers living in Lebanon, the majority of whom are women. At least 75 percent of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon at the time were Ethiopian, according to a 2019 Amnesty International report citing the Ministry of Labor. They began arriving in the 1980s and flooded the country in droves in the 1990s and 2000s after the Lebanese civil war ended. Most take low-wage jobs as live-in caregivers and send money back to their families back home.
Israel, which has been at war in Gaza since October last year, escalated its attacks on Lebanon last month. The military said the attack targeted facilities used by the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Last year’s Israeli attack on Lebanon killed at least 1,900 people, according to the country’s Health Ministry.
More than 1 million people have been forced from their homes, Soleti said, including many migrant domestic workers.
“Everyone fled from the city to Beirut or other places where they have relatives. But for migrants, there is nowhere to go,” she says. “Some people are sleeping outside with nowhere to go.”
In Sidon, Lebanon’s third largest city, schools have become makeshift shelters for displaced people, said Ubayeh Negash, another Ethiopian domestic worker who has lived there for nearly 20 years and is considering fleeing. he said.
“We haven’t been hit that hard yet. Neighboring areas like Nabatiyeh and Gaziyeh have been destroyed. We’re okay, but I don’t feel safe staying here,” she told Al Jazeera. “I was here in 2006 (since the Israeli attack) and this time it’s even worse.”
Smoke rises after an Israeli attack on Beirut’s Dahieh district, October 3, 2024 (Murat Sengur/Anadolu Agency)
The attack on Lebanon comes several years after a devastating financial crisis that began in 2019 and saw the value of the local currency, the Lebanese pound, drop by up to 90%. According to the United Nations, by 2021, three-quarters of Lebanese will be living below the poverty line.
Thousands of domestic workers have lost their jobs as the coronavirus pandemic worsens the crisis. Amnesty International says many Lebanese employers are unable to pay their foreign workers and have chosen to leave them on the streets outside their embassy in the capital Beirut. Nevertheless, many migrants choose to remain in Lebanon due to a lack of prospects in their home country.
But over the past year, the embassy in Beirut has come under increasing pressure to request repatriation after near-daily gunfights broke out between Israel and Hezbollah across Lebanon’s southern border.
The government of the Philippines, one of the countries with the largest numbers of domestic workers, has been mobilizing its citizens and repatriating them for free for most of the year.
However, according to domestic workers from four African countries interviewed by Al Jazeera, there has been little response from African diplomats in Lebanon.
“It’s like we don’t have an embassy here,” says Sophie Ndongo, a migrant domestic worker and leader of Beirut’s Cameroonian community. “Ever since the Israelis started bombing Lebanon, I have been receiving requests from Cameroonian women to help repatriate them. It’s like I’m their ambassador!”
Cameroon only has an honorary consul in Lebanon.
“Over the past few weeks, some women have fled from southern Lebanon and come to Beirut seeking refuge. They called me after their employers locked them in their homes, fled the area, and left them to die. There are people,” Ndongo said.
“Domestic workers are not seen as human beings”
Migrant workers in Lebanon are excluded from the protections afforded to workers under the country’s domestic labor laws. Instead, their status is regulated by a “kafala” or sponsorship system, which human rights researchers liken to a form of modern-day slavery.
Under the kafala system, migrants cannot seek legal redress for abuses committed against them, no matter how serious. According to Human Rights Watch, this led to rampant abuse of domestic workers over the years, and by 2017 Lebanese authorities were killing two migrant domestic workers every week, most of them through failed escapes or suicide. It was assumed that he was dead.
“Unfortunately, domestic workers are not seen as human beings here,” Ndongo added. “The racism and abuse we experience in the workplace knows no bounds. It has been going on for decades, and it shows no signs of getting better.”
A family gathers in a girls’ dormitory at a migrant temporary shelter in Beirut on October 1, 2024 (Louiza Ghouliamaki/Reuters)
Under the kafala system, migrant workers often require the intervention of their country’s diplomats to escape abusive employers or defend themselves in court.
Many consulates in the countries of origin of Lebanese domestic workers are staffed by “honorary consuls” rather than diplomats, many of whom are Lebanese nationals working part-time or on a volunteer basis. Previous Al Jazeera reporting has revealed the neglect and mistreatment of citizens by these honorary consuls.
As the Lebanese crisis escalates, Al Jazeera reports that Kenya’s honorary consulate and Ethiopian consulate are using their social media pages to send personal identification documents on WhatsApp to register nationals who may eventually be repatriated. I discovered that the people are being called upon to do so.
But with most flights out of Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport canceled and Israeli attacks escalating, it is unclear whether repatriation flights can be planned anytime soon.
Al Jazeera contacted the Ethiopian and Kenyan government’s diplomatic missions in Beirut but did not receive a response.
Kicked out “for not being Lebanese”
Sandrine*, a Malagasy national, said she fled her home in the Beirut suburb of Dahieh, which was devastated by Israeli airstrikes, and spent two days homeless with nowhere to go.
“(The honorary consul of Madagascar) is sending us messages on Facebook wishing us well, but he’s not actually helping us,” Sandrine said. “I still remember the explosion the day they killed (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah. It was the most terrifying sound, like a hundred earthquakes. It reduced everything to ashes.”
It is unclear whether migrant domestic workers are among the more than 11,000 casualties tallied by the Lebanese Ministry of Health, but Sandrine said judging by the destruction she witnessed, many were killed and injured. He is convinced that it must be.
Two Ethiopians in the city of Tire told Al Jazeera that they were aware of the deaths of two Ethiopian domestic workers who were killed along with their employers when their apartment building was destroyed in an airstrike. We have not yet independently verified that testimony. The Lebanese Ministry of Health does not release the number of deaths by nationality.
Sandrine said finding shelter was difficult for survivors, not only because of the severe lack of accommodation. She said many homes and schools in Beirut have been converted into official shelters for displaced people, but they are refusing her and other migrants access because of their documents. Eventually, she was able to find a friend to evacuate with.
“They said they lacked documentation, but I think the rule is ‘Lebanese only’.”
A 5-year-old child sleeps in a temporary shelter for migrants in Beirut (Louiza Ghouliamaki/Reuters)
Selina*, a Sierra Leonean migrant worker in the city of Tripoli in the north of the country, told Al Jazeera that she and her fellow 70 migrants, mostly Sierra Leoneans and a few Bangladeshis, were kicked out of a school shelter for unfair reasons. He said he was one of the group. Being Lebanese.
“I fled the neighborhood because I received a warning from the Israelis that they were going to bomb the area. The mother and baby joined us.
“We heard that there was a shelter at a school in Tripoli, so we took a bus from Beirut to go there. We arrived at the school between midnight and 2am. I don’t think they saw us. It was in the morning that they realized we were immigrants.
“In the morning, the General Security Service (Lebanese Immigration Service) came and said this shelter was not for us. They forced us out and called us ‘Ajnabi’.” (means “foreigner” or “foreigner” in Arabic).
Selina said the group eventually returned to Beirut, but police told them they were not welcome, even though the city’s downtown sidewalks were filled with displaced people.
“We spent five days like this sleeping outside. There was heavy rain and bombing every night. But people kept calling the police on us. One time they said they had a baby with them. I once tried to reason with the police. I broke down in tears.”
Immigrant-run organizations and local Lebanese nonprofits are scrambling to find homes and churches of kind strangers who offer to shelter displaced men, women and children.
So far, major humanitarian agencies, including the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), have done little to shoulder the burden and have been unable to address the shelter problem, according to three aid workers familiar with the issue and the messages. They are encouraging immigrant community organizations to take action. Seen by Al Jazeera. The IOM office in Beirut has not yet responded to Al Jazeera’s email inquiries regarding this matter.
African immigrants in Lebanon face two unique challenges: the struggle to survive under Israeli shelling and discrimination based on the color of their skin. pic.twitter.com/IGWx08HrJH
— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 4, 2024
Tsigereda Birhanu, an Ethiopian immigrant and humanitarian aid worker for Egna Legna Biside, an organization run by Ethiopian immigrants, says that displaced Africans are actually being refused entry at schools, churches, and other evacuation centers. he admitted to Al Jazeera.
She added that her organization found shelter for 45 women in Selina’s group and also delivered food and mattresses. Another organization supported the rest of the group.
“Shelter is a big problem here. There is nothing officially arranged for migrants. If it weren’t for the kind people, there would be many more people on the streets. Winter is approaching. It’s getting colder here.”
Mr. Tsigereda also said that 60 Bangladeshi migrants who had been evacuated from areas of the country targeted by bombing and who were also denied access to public shelter spaces had taken shelter in an abandoned construction site in Beirut. He also shared a video of himself saying he was using it.
The aid worker said he was concerned that many of the displaced people had “anxiety and heart problems that are worsening due to the airstrikes.” But a small organization like hers can’t offer much help.
“We don’t have the means to meet the demand,” she said. “We need food, medicine and clothing for displaced and traumatized people.”
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of some undocumented and vulnerable women.
