In a Sudanese village, cluster munitions lay in wait

Photo from the Independent newspaper website. Copyright not mine.

Sudanese villagers are requesting assistance to dispose of unexploded Russian-made cluster munitions, according to a recent article in the Independent newspaper. The cluster bombs, which are the first recorded use of the munitions by Khartoum in the Southern Kordofan conflict, were found by the residents of the Nuba Mountain village of Angolo.

Neither Sudan nor South Sudan have signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions banning the use, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions. Nevertheless, as the article remarks, the use of such indiscriminate weapons in civilian areas is largely viewed as a crime against international law. Khartoum’s use of such a catastrophically indiscriminate and ineffective weapon in a civilian area is very worrying and it is to be hoped that local or international assistance is provided as soon as possible to remove the weapons.

Below is a passage from the article explaining the high failure rate of the weapon:

“The Angolo bomb is a Soviet-made RBK-500 cluster weapon, filled with dozens of spherical A0-2.5RTM submunitions, designed to burst in half on impact and scatter shards of shrapnel and ball-bearings over a wide area.

Each hemisphere of the bomblet is designed to achieve a “kill radius” of 20 metres, yet there were no reported casualties in the attack or after, and none of the submunitions appear to have exploded.

Perhaps the relative obsolescence of the bomb led to its malfunction. The serial numbers visible on the undeployed submunitions indicate that they were manufactured in Russia’s Degtiarev plant in 1984.

Human Rights Watch observed a high failure rate for these submunitions in Russia’s 2006 conflict with Georgia, though there is no known precedent for such a complete failure of this type of bomb in an airstrike.”

When a man beats a migrant woman (in public)

Lebanon has been lambasted in the international media in recent years for mistreatment of migrant domestic workers. When a man can beat and drag a woman in public without reprimand from onlookers, you feel Lebanon deserves that notoriety. On Thursday, a local television channel broadcast amateur footage showing a Lebanese man attacking an Ethiopian woman in front of the Ethiopian Embassy. According to Al-Akhbar newspaper, the man was filmed “pulling at the woman’s hair, and dragging her into his car, as she screamed and wailed.”

“The attack occurred in broad daylight, with no bystanders coming to the woman’s aid.” You can watch the incident above.

This disgraceful act comes at a time when the Lebanese parliament is purposefully sabotaging a law to protect women from violence. It only reinforces the urgent need for the enactment, enforcement and respect of laws that criminalize racism, sexism and violence. This man needs to be brought before a court of law, but something tells me it is unlikely to happen.

There are around 200,000 women, mostly from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Madagascar, who work in Lebanon as domestic helpers. While many are treated well, many women report being confined to their employers houses, having their passports confiscated or wages withheld, and can be subject to horrific emotional, physical, sexual and economic violence.

If you want to get involved in migrant rights activism in Lebanon, take a look at the Migrant Worker Task Force website, a volunteer-run initiative to tackle racism and promote integration in Lebanon. Also look at the Anti Racism Movement, which does some great work too. In the year 2012, it is quite appalling that such incidents are allowed to go unpunished.

Prisons See Institutionalised Injustice

By Dalila Mahdawi

When Joanna Bailey (not her real name), a British journalist formerly based in Lebanon, became the victim of a sexual assault in Beirut, she sought help at a local police station. As she was giving her statement, the police dragged her assailant into the room. The man had been beaten up, and was subjected to further violence in front of her.

“One of the officers took off his belt and began beating him with it for what felt like ten minutes.” When Bailey asked the officers to stop, “they said it was the only way he would learn,” she recalls.

“After that they made him strip down to his underwear in front of me and jog on the spot for about 30 minutes.” Bailey left feeling not only profoundly disturbed by the assault on her, but distressed at the extrajudicial punishment meted out to her attacker.

Such stories of ritual humiliation, mistreatment and beatings are familiar to many detainees in Lebanon. A lack of training and poor human rights awareness among police officers means many turn to violence to obtain confessions from suspects.

According to a report released earlier this year by the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), around 60 percent of detainees experience some form of torture or mistreatment. One death as a result of torture was recorded in 2010, the report said.

Those suspected of espionage, drug dealing and religious extremism are most likely to be subjected to abuse by the police. All this takes place in a culture of impunity, says Wadih Al-Asmar, secretary- general of CLDH: “Police officers are not well trained and there is no real accountability. In the very few cases that have been investigated, the results remain confidential.”

Prison conditions are just as bleak as those at police stations, with inmates being locked away without trial for years in grossly overcrowded and unhygienic conditions. With almost no rehabilitation services available, most prisoners spend their days confined to their cells, chain-smoking, chatting and, when tempers flare, fighting.

In the last three years, 400 people arrested on security charges have been subjected to procedure violations that made their detention arbitrary, the CLDH report found.

“It’s a disaster,” says Ghassan Moukheiber, an MP who heads the Lebanese Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights and who has produced a detailed report on prison reform. “The situation is dire. I qualify prisons as fitting into the following categories – bad, very bad or inhumane. The prison conditions are themselves equal to torture, cruel and degrading treatment.”

Lebanon’s 20 prisons can officially hold 3,653 inmates, but in 2010 provided an uncomfortable abode to some 5,324 prisoners, an earlier CLDH report found. Roumieh, Lebanon’s biggest men’s prison, built with a maximum capacity of 1,500 inmates, held about 3,500. According to Moukheiber, with the exception of Roumieh, none of Lebanon’s prisons were built specifically as penitentiaries.

Lebanon is a signatory to the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as its Optional Protocol, but has not yet fulfilled its obligation to establish a National Preventative Mechanism against torture. It is also several years overdue in submitting a report to the Convention’s Committee on the measures it is taking to implement the treaty.

In a damning 2009 report to the Lebanese government by General Ashraf Rifi, head of the Internal Security Forces (ISF), the body which overlooks prison administration, two-thirds of all prisoners were found to be awaiting sentencing. Around 250 foreign prisoners remained in prison after completing their sentences, largely due to deportation complications, Rifi said.

Most were imprisoned for lacking the necessary paperwork to remain in Lebanon and included a number of refugees and asylum seekers.

With minimal funding being allocated to penitentiaries, Moukheiber told IPS that the Lebanese state was failing to provide prisoners with the vital rehabilitation, health and educational services they needed in order to reintegrate back into society.

But despite the gloomy outlook, criminologist Omar Nashabe insists slow improvements are under way. The number of inmates at Roumieh has fallen, he says. “That’s a big step forward because it allows the prison administration to better control the prison.”

However, basic services and security remain problematic. Prisoners often have to undertake hunger strikes or other extreme measures in order to access medical care, and escape attempts are frequent.

In April, Roumieh saw one of the biggest prison riots in Lebanese history. Prisoners were able to break down doors and take control of much of the prison in a stand-off which resulted in the death of four inmates.

Although the government has allocated five million dollars to refurbish the prison, Nashabe admits the figure won’t even cover repair costs. “Some of the doors inside the prison are still without locks and there are still problems with electricity and water.”

Nevertheless, Nashabe says that the riot prompted the Lebanese judicial authorities to be more flexible with incarceration as a pre-trial measure and punishment. A five-year plan to transfer management of the prisons from the ISF to a specialised body within the Justice Ministry is also under way, he says.

But according to Moukheiber, “it is not a panacea just to switch prison administration from one ministry to another. The appropriate solution is much more complex,” involving a string of measures, including building new facilities, improving access to healthcare, rehabilitation services and legal aid, and specialised training of prison staff and judges.

For many prisoners, such improvements will come too late. Twenty-seven year-old Marwan (not his real name) has been in prison for two years awaiting sentencing for drug dealing. “It’s unacceptable that I haven’t been sentenced yet,” he told IPS via a smart phone he’d managed to smuggle behind bars.

The police “haven’t got any evidence against me, only testimonies from a few people.” Marwan, who hasn’t yet been able to meet with a lawyer, says he expects to be incarcerated “at least another three years.” (END)

Is it right to show graphic images in the press?

NOTE: After last week’s lynchmob attack, which was shown in graphic detail by local TV stations and newspapers, I questioned whether I had made the right moral decision about posting pictures on my blog (see below posts). I decided to put this question to media workers-their opinions can be read below. I stand by my decision to show explicit images from the murder in the belief that people should be given the choice to see for themselves what goes on around them in this world, rather than live in happy ignorance. If we tolerate gruesome horror and slasher films, why shouldn’t we accept violence when it happens in real life?)

Media under fire for showing images of Ketermaya killing
By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Saturday, May 01, 2010

BEIRUT: As public outrage over Thursday’s lynching in Ketermaya grows, many in Lebanon are questioning whether media outlets were right to show images of the brutal crime.

Residents of the Chouf mountain village attacked and killed Mohammad Msallem in a spontaneous mob attack rarely seen in Lebanon. Msallem, a 38-year-old Egyptian butcher, was the prime suspect in the quadruple murder of an elderly couple and their two young granddaughters earlier this week.

When Msallem was brought back to the scene of the crime by police, angry residents fought off policemen and stabbed him with sticks and knives. They then stripped his corpse down to the underpants and paraded him through the village on the hood of a white Mercedes before hanging him from an electricity pole.

The lynching has provoked widespread revulsion, with top officials demanding Msallem’s killers be brought to justice. It has also sparked debate over the role of the media in reporting such bloody incidents.

On Friday, a number of Lebanese newspapers carried graphic pictures of the lynching on their front pages. Several television stations also aired video footage, with some blurring out the victim’s bloodied corpse. French language daily L’Orient-Le Jour ran a picture of local men hoisting Msallem’s body onto an electricity pole on its front page, under the headline “Barbaric times.”

Al-Akhbar, which ran less explicit photographs, also denounced the killing as an act of barbarism “unprecedented and possible only in countries where the law of the jungle prevails.” A video of the murder was posted by LBC Television on video-sharing website YouTube, with images also being circulated on social media website Facebook.

As-Safir and The Daily Star newspapers both declined to run images.

On Friday, Information Minister Tarek Mitri condemned media outlets that chose to run images of Msallem’s killing, saying that their publication had prompted a flurry of complaints to his office.

While media outlets were duty-bound to report Msallem’s killing, it was unacceptable to publish explicit images of his death, said Metn MP Ghassan Moukheiber, a long-time human rights campaigner. He said there needed to be “limits” to what was considered appropriate for public consumption. The use of images “should be within the boundaries of respect for human dignity,” he told The Daily Star.

Dina Abi Saab, researcher at SKeyes (Samir Kassir eyes) Center for Media and Cultural Freedom, agreed it was disrespectful to show scenes of the lynching. The media is expected “to present things as they are, but we can say it with words,” she said. “We have to respect the dead, not only the emotions of the family who had four members murdered.”

Sharif Nashashibi of the London-based Arab Media Watch, believed consumers needed to be given the option to see graphic content, saying photographs could often be more convincing than the written word. “If something gruesome has happened, there’s no point in the media pretending it didn’t happen that way.” Sanitizing images was tantamount to “cheating the public,” he said. An example of this was European coverage of the 2006 war on Lebanon, where graphic images of victims were not published. “Arab nations were so much angrier because they got to see what happened,” Nashashibi said. “Using these images hopefully serves to prevent these acts from happening again.”

Abdel-Hadi Mahfouz, head of the National Audiovisual Media Council, said he hoped media outlets that had shown explicit images would be prosecuted. According to the 1994 Audiovisual Law, outlets are forbidden from publishing images of a violent or upsetting nature. “Similar incidents have happened before, but media outlets have political affiliations” that protects them from being penalized, Mahfouz said. “I would like to see the law being implemented at least once.”

Moukheiber said he hoped the killing would lead to a “substantive and serious dialogue within the media industry” on best practices, urging the formation of a code of conduct. Abi Saab agreed: “We have to reach a point where we make rules in the media.”

Lynchmob kill suspected murderer-caution graphic photos

Lebanese men display the body of Egyptian Mohammed Msallem after he was stabbed to death in Ketermaya village in the central Chouf mountains, Lebanon, Thursday, April 29, 2010. Security officials say angry Lebanese villagers have stabbed to death an Egyptian man and hung his body on a pole over his alleged murder of four people from the same family. Msallem was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of shooting two children aged 7 and 9 and their two grandparents.(AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Honor killing in Lebanon

This AFP story filed on Friday March 12 describes the latest honor killing in Lebanon. It says honor crimes are rare in Lebanon but a recent report I read said around 88 had occured in a seven year period (I can’t remember where I read that so don’t quote me on that), which is 88 too many. Sadly Lebanon’s penal code grants leniency to such killers, as it does rapists, who are pardoned if they propose to their victim. The good news is that a family violence bill is in the works, which might herald a new era in how Lebanon views perpetrators of gender-based and child abuse.

BEIRUT: A Lebanese man has been arrested in northern Lebanon for killing his sister earlier this week in what authorities described as an honour killing, a security official said on Friday. “The 24-year-old victim was single and apparently had a boyfriend,” the security official told AFP. “(Her brother) admitted shooting her twice in the head to cleanse the family honour.” The woman was only identified by her initials, as was her 28-year-old brother. Her body was discovered on Tuesday on the main road of the village of Hakr al-Daheri, in the northern Akkar region. “This kind of crime is not common in Lebanon but we have a few every year,” the official said. Lebanese law stipulates extenuating circumstances for so-called honour killings, in which male relatives kill female kin they suspect of illicit behaviour with men. In 2007, Lebanon’s top Shiite Muslim cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah issued a fatwa, or religious edict, banning honour killings as repulsive acts that contradict Islamic law.

Photographs show Lebanon’s dark world of domestic violence

Victims of abusive partners display work in effort to break taboo
By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Thursday, December 03, 2009

BEIRUT: For many women throughout the world, the place where they are most vulnerable to violence is not the street, but their own home. For Layla (not her real name), home brought a daily ritual of violence and humiliation at the hands of an abusive husband. Last year, he married another woman behind her back and left for another country, kidnapping his and Layla’s three children. She has not seen them since.

Documentary photographer and women’s rights activist Dalia Khamissy has been working with Layla and nine other women since August to create an exhibition of photographs, “Behind the Doors: Through the Eyes of Women Survivors of Violence.”

For the project, Khamissy partnered with KAFA: Enough Violence and Exploitation, a Lebanese non-governmental organization dedicated to eradicating gender-based violence, child abuse and human trafficking. The 10 participants are among hundreds of survivors of domestic violence who receive social, psychological, legal and other support from KAFA.

Khamissy’s project, funded by the Italian Embassy in Lebanon and the Italian Cooperation Office, opens to the public Thursday afternoon. The exhibition falls during the annual “16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence,” which sees a flurry of activity across the globe toward ending domestic, family and gender-based violence from November 25 to December 10.

Khamissy said she hoped the exhibition would help thrust open the doors on a highly stigmatized topic.

“I hope it will make people more aware about domestic violence and make some women speak out and seek help,” she said.

Reflecting their different experiences, each woman explored a particular theme through their photographs. One woman shot images of her body, the so-called source of all her problems with her partner. Another chose to grimly document the tools of torture used by her husband.

“Dalia taught us how to compose, to adjust the light, and other technical issues about the camera, so we could give photos that reflected our feelings and suffering but that were also good quality,” said Tala (not her real name).

Because of the women’s need to remain anonymous, many of the photographs are dark, blurry, and completely untraceable back to their creator. But despite their somber and often grainy nature, the photographs look professional.

“I’m so proud. These are the pictures by women who never touched a camera before,” Khamissy said. In one striking black and white photograph, a pair of virginal white underpants lies on a stone wall. The caption, written by someone identified only as B.H, reads: “I am in my fifties and this image keeps haunting me.”

In order to produce the photographs, the women involved had to reflect on their experiences, stirring up memories of violence and disgrace they might rather not recall.

“We consider this work as a form of therapy,” said KAFA social worker Rima Abi Nader.

“At the beginning, it wasn’t easy to go deep inside myself and show what was hurting,” said Tala, who took five weeks to start shooting photographs she felt truly represented her feelings. “When you have good memories, you want to remember them. When you have bad memories, you’d rather forget.”

The photographs “represent a visual framework of the pain that [a] few women went through over many years, and of a suffering that remained absent from the social awareness and buried in the maze of the privacies of [the family home] and social taboos,” said KAFA director Zoya Rouhana.

While they reveal the experiences of only 10 women, the exhibition’s photographs bring into relief the experience of many more Lebanese women who have or are living through domestic violence.

Violence against women is the most persistent human-rights abuse in the world yet also the most unpunished.

A third of women across the globe have at some point been coerced into sex, beaten, or otherwise abused, most often by someone known to them, the World Health Organization has said. According to the World Bank, women between the ages of 15 and 44 are more likely to be raped or experience violence than cancer, war or car accidents.

No statistics about domestic violence exist in Lebanon, where domestic violence remains very much a taboo. But legislation clearly favors men: the penal code has no specific laws relating to domestic violence and does not recognize marital rape a crime. Rapists can be pardoned if they propose to their victims and men granted lenient sentences if found to have killed a female family member to preserve the family “honor.”

Khamissy said she hopes the exhibition will highlight the urgency of adopting a family-violence protection bill. A law has been drafted by KAFA, and if introduced, special police stations and courts would be opened to address family violence, and perpetrators of violence would be required to pay all expenses caused by their actions, such as medical care or legal fees.

The draft law is especially urgent, said Nader, because of the legal and social obstacles women encounter when trying to escape abuse. “In our confessional system [where personal matters are governed over by religious courts], it’s rare to give women the right to custody or their right to obtain divorce,” she added.

Many women are also economically dependent on their abusive partner, making it even more difficult for them to leave. Some of the women participating in the exhibition still live with violent husbands.

Still, for Rouhana, the photos are a symbol of “resistance to male power and to the rule of some tyrants empowered by the patriarchal system [which grants them] an almost unrestricted control over the destiny of their wives, daughters, sisters.”

“Before I got married, I thought I was a strong and free person,” said Layla. “After marriage, I was imprisoned.”

Tala agreed: “Everything [you do] is limited – what you are going to wear, where you are going, even your political views he decides.”

“This [exhibition] is a salute to the women who decided to revolt against what others consider an inevitable fate and unchangeable reality, despite the fact that their resistance is still unrecognized, unprotected and unsupported,” said KAFA director Rouhana.

“Behind the Doors” is showing at the Ministry of Tourism in Hamra from 4 p.m Thursday, December 3, to Wednesday, December 9, 2009.

If you or someone you know wants to talk about domestic violence, call KAFA’s confidential, round-the-clock helpline on 03 018 019.

What do you do if you get attacked?

By Dalila Mahdawi

BEIRUT: When Christelle, 25, was attacked one evening a few years ago, she literally froze with fright.

“I had my earphones in when the guy grabbed me from behind. He tore my bag off and tried to drag me away. I was so shocked by what was happening that I couldn’t react. I could hardly even breathe,” she said.

Unable to find her voice to scream or the strength to physically defend herself, Christelle (not her real name) is certain she would have been raped that night if the noise of an approaching car hadn’t scared off her aggressor. “Now when I look back at what happened I wish I had done something to try and protect myself, instead of acting like a spectator to my own attack,” she said.

Aware that many people do not know how to react when confronted by violence, Senshido International held a workshop in Beirut on Sunday highlighting ways to react to potentially violent situations, de-escalate confrontations and survive violence.

Unlike martial arts, which are often based on elaborate and unfeasible moves, Senshido uses simple strategies to help individuals survive real-life violence, said Georges Fahmy, Senshido International’s director of operations for the greater Middle East and workshop leader.

Proceeds from the high-energy workshop were donated to KAFA: Enough Violence and Exploitation, an NGO dedicated to eradicating gender-based and family violence, child abuse and human trafficking.

Ghida Anani, program coordinator at KAFA, said Senshido appealed to the NGO’s core values. “It’s very related to our work on empowering women, on avoiding and refusing all forms of violence, and at the same time changing the perception of being a victim to that of a survivor,” she said, adding that KAFA hoped to organize free self-defense classes in the future.

No statistics exist in Lebanon about the number of people violently attacked by strangers, but gender and family-based violence is widespread, Anani said.

Violence against women is “the most pervasive yet least-recognized human-rights abuse in the world,” according to the United Nations. One-third of all women have at some point been forced into sex, beaten or otherwise abused, usually by somebody they know, the World Health Organization has said. Domestic violence kills or disables more women than disease, war or car accidents.

Lebanon is no exception, with every woman at the workshop relating experiences of sexual harassment or violence. The Lebanese penal code actually works in the favor of perpetrators of gender-based violence by not recognizing marital rape as a crime and forgiving rapists if they propose to their victims. Furthermore, it remains somewhat of a taboo to talk openly about domestic violence. “As a woman in Lebanon, you should be prepared for anything,” said one participant, Maha.

One of the more gruesome techniques Fahmy taught was “The Shredder,” which involves sticking one’s fingers in the eyes, nose or throat of your attacker. So will the workshop’s participants be putting their newfound skills into practice? “If I need to, yes,” said one woman. “But I hope I never have to.”

KAFA’s around-the-clock helpline is 03 018 019

Enforced Idleness in Nahr al-Bared

With the old camp destroyed, the people of Nahr al-Bared have nothing

BEIRUT: Fiddling with mobile phones, chain smoking and sitting around: enforced idleness is the burden of almost every single resident in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp.

Their abysmal situation is the focus of a new film, “A Sip of Coffee,” produced by a-films, an international anarchist film collective presently focusing its efforts on the camp. Those in the collective run film-making workshops within the camp in the hope of promoting film-making as a tool for political activism, a-films activist Ray Smith told The Daily Star. He produced with film along with novice film-maker Mohammad Eshtawi.

Situated 16 kilometers North of Tripoli, Nahr al-Bared used to be a source of pride for its residents – with a thriving economy and bustling market attracting both Lebanese and Palestinian customers, it was the most prosperous of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps. Its luck turned for the worst in 2007 when a militant Islamist group, Fatah al-Islam, sought refuge in the camp. A three-month battle between the group and the Lebanese Armed Forces, ending on September 2, resulted in the total annihilation of the camp. Nahr al-Bared’s Palestinian residents found themselves displaced for a second time in history, losing everything they had saved and built up over the last 60 years. Two years on from that devastating war, the camp has been partially cleared of rubble, but the people of Nahr al-Bared remain in limbo: living in temporary housing units as they wait for the reconstruction to begin. Nahr al-Bared’s once robust economy was destroyed along with the camp.

“A Sip of Coffee” revolves around the testimonies of Mohammad, an unemployed camp resident in his twenties, and his father Ziyad. Through their voices, the 26-minute film illustrates the issues that matter most to Nahr al-Bared’s residents: unemployment, reconstruction, displacement and endless, stifling monotony.

Mohammad spends most of his days doing nothing. “Although the week has seven days, we feel as though it only has one day, and it’s always the same one,” he says in the film. “There’s nowhere to go, there are no clubs and no libraries to borrow books to try and educate oneself.”

Mohammad has tried to get a job but there simply aren’t any. What work he can find is often casual day labor. Mohammad’s father Ziyad has also struggled to find work after losing his two shops in the camp’s siege. “After the destruction of Nahr al-Bared and its declaration as a military zone, the economy was reduced to point zero … the camp’s economy depended on the [Lebanese] residents of the Akkar region,” he tells the camera in a resigned voice. He now scrapes money together by fishing and running a makeshift cafe.

Resentment is growing steadily among the camp’s residents as the many promises made to rebuild the destroyed camp falter. The stifling living conditions in the temporary housing units, oppressively hot in summer and freezing cold in winter, only aggravate their anger. “I’m sorry to say it, but we live in cow sheds,” Mohammad says. NGOs call the cramped iron and concrete structures temporary but they feel permanent to many of those struggling inside. “When my family and I gather in the evening, I hardly know where to sit – it’s very crowded,” Mohammad says.

Ziyad shares his frustration. “The population density always causes problem between the families who aren’t used to each other,” he says. Ziyad, like many others, fear they will be displaced forever, and participate in protests urging the authorities to begin immediate reconstruction of the camp.

“People rightfully feel that they’ve lost control over their lives, because their lives are being ‘managed’ by NGOs and UNRWA (the UN agency dedicated to providing assistance to Palestinian refugees), and because their movement is limited by the Army’s checkpoint and permit system,” said Smith. 

Although a ceremony was held this March to mark the beginning of reconstruction, nothing has happened since then.

Ziyad appears to have given up hope that Nahr al-Bared will ever be rebuilt, saying he’ll only believe in the promises of officials when he sees construction material entering the camp. “I can’t believe in all these empty promises and lies by [Prime Minister Fouad] Siniora and [PLO Representative in Lebanon] Abbas Zaki.”

Film casts spotlight on abusive employers of domestic workers

Film casts spotlight on abusive employers of domestic workers
Documentary calls for protecting rights of household helpers
By Dalila Mahdawi
Tuesday, November 25, 2008

 

 

BEIRUT: “Finally, the Filipina domestic worker is arriving,” begins Carol Mansour’s latest documentary. “This is the first time I’m getting someone to help at home … I have no doubt that she will help me a lot.””Maid in Lebanon II,” which screened on Monday evening at Club 43 in Gemmayzeh, is Mansour’s second film addressing the status of female migrant workers in Lebanon.

Whereas the first film was told from the point of view of a domestic worker, “Maid in Lebanon II” is narrated by Ghada Najjar, who has employed a woman called Jelly Cadez to help her manage the household. Funded by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and filmed in Sri Lanka and Lebanon, Mansour’s documentary is perhaps the most comprehensive study to date of the working conditions of migrant domestic workers, their rights and obligations under Lebanese law, and those of their employers.

Often leaving their families and abject poverty behind them, hundreds of thousands of women from Africa and Asia travel every year to Lebanon and countries in the Gulf to work as domestic workers. While some women are well treated by their employers, others are not so lucky. Their plight often goes unnoticed and in official circles, ignored. The rights of migrant domestic workers are not protected under Lebanese labor laws, but with 200,000 of them thought to be living here – about 5 percent of the county’s population, people are slowly becoming more aware of the fact that the rights of household helpers need to be protected.

Speaking to The Daily Star, Mansour says, “the problem is so obvious. Anybody, whether they are a filmmaker or a bank worker, can see it.” According to Mansour, who has collected awards for her hard-hitting films on the summer 2006 war in Lebanon and Cairo street children, “there are definitely a lot of things [pertaining to the rights of domestic workers] that need to be talked about.”

In a 2006 study conducted by Ray Jureidini of the American University of Beirut, the biggest complaint made by domestic workers was that their employers withheld their pay. One woman interviewed in the film says she worked for eight years without receiving “even 1,000 lira” from her employer, who shouted at her when she asked to be paid.

“There is no reason for employers to say, “We’ll hold onto your salary,” says Caritas representative Najla Chahda in Mansour’s film. “Would I accept to work all month and not be paid at the end?”

Caritas is the main nongovernmental organization working with domestic workers in Lebanon and says it receives 40 new cases of women seeking help every month.

Jureidini’s study also found that 60,000 to 70,000 domestic workers had been subject to “physical punishment, deprivation of food and forced confinement” and that 10,000 to 20,000 had been physically and sexually abused.

According to an August report released by Human Rights Watch, “at least” 95 women working as domestic workers in Lebanon had died between January 1, 2007, and August 15, 2008, a figure that translates to more than one woman per week. Of the 95 deaths, 40 were “classified by the embassies of the migrants as suicide,” said HRW, stressing that their list was not exhaustive. “Most deaths resulting from a building fall are failed attempts to escape” the ill treatment that Jureidini found so often haunts these women, a labor attache told HRW.

While domestic workers are required to undergo training courses in their home countries before taking up their posts in the Middle East, no similar orientation course is yet demanded of employers. “Some receiving countries” are calling for employers to be trained in “cross-cultural communication … and the rights and duties of both parties,” Ghada narrates. “This practice is not yet established in Lebanon.”

The attitudes toward domestic workers displayed by some employers in “Maid in Lebanon II” offer a convincing argument for the pressing need to introduce such courses.

“They demand so much,” complains one woman of domestic workers. “You can’t even beat them anymore because they’ve become so rude.”

According to a Sri Lankan worker talking to Mansour from a safehouse, her “madame would not allow me to drink milk or Nescafe … She would give me very little food … I was not allowed to sit.”

The attitudes that some employers have toward their house help needs to change, says Chahda. “They claim that since they paid money to get this girl, then they own her.”

Mansour says she was “shocked” by the attitudes of some of the employers she filmed. “They wouldn’t treat their domestic workers the way they do if they put themselves in her shoes,” she says. “If I can change 10 percent of people’s thinking on this issue, I’d feel like I was contributing to a better world,” adds Mansour.

Reacting to Lebanon’s increasingly notorious reputation as a hotbed for domestic worker abuse, Ethiopia this year banned its citizens from seeking employment here. Likewise, Sri Lanka has said it will impose travel restrictions on those seeking employment in Lebanon.

According to the Sri Lankan government, 50 women return from the Middle East in distress each day.

Lebanon is a signatory to the International Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, but has yet to sign the 2003 Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families.

However, some improvement on the issue is being made.

In early 2006, an official steering committee was established by the Labor Ministry to ease the problems of domestic workers. According to the director of the ILO’s regional office, Nada al-Nashif, whose organization is part of the committee, one of its goals is to introduce standardized employment contracts in Arabic, English, French and the native language of the worker.

These contracts “should protect the rights and responsibilities of both” the employer and employee, Nashif says in the film, and be “available to domestic workers upon their arrival” in the country. The committee has also launched a public awareness campaign on the issue that “targets Lebanese public opinion.”

The ILO is also pressuring the Lebanese government to formulate a new law for migrant workers. This follows a historic achievement earlier this year when “a first step was taken internationally toward recognizing domestic workers’ rights” after the ILO agreed to work on formulating an international convention that would protect their rights, narrates Ghada. 

Most of Lebanon’s migrant women workers are Sri Lankan, numbering some 86,000, according to statistics from the Sri Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment. The second two largest communities are Ethiopians and Filipinas.

 

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