UN envoy urges Lebanon to protect its 200,000 domestic workers

UN envoy urges Lebanon to protect its 200,000 domestic workers

2011-10-18 20:20:48 GMT+7 (ICT)

UNITED NATIONS (BNO NEWS) -- The United Nations has urged Lebanon to enact legislation to protect some 200,000 domestic workers in the country, warning that some of them live in domestic servitude and are subject to economic exploitation as well as physical, psychological and sexual abuses.

UN Special Rapporteur Gulnara Shahinian urged Lebanese authorities to ensure that domestic workers obtain legal protection and that employers are aware of their obligations when recruiting domestic workers. She said that during her first visit to the country she met with women who were physically and sexually abused and stressed that migrant domestic workers are especially vulnerable to exploitation.

"Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, a majority of whom are women, are legally invisible which makes them acutely vulnerable to domestic servitude," said the UN expert monitoring contemporary forms of slavery. "The migrant domestic worker is required to live in their employer's households, faces racial and gender discrimination and is deprived of the necessary legal protection to safeguard their rights."

Shahinian noted that the Lebanese government has taken some positive measures such as the establishment of a hotline to denounce abuses and a national steering committee which has developed a new draft law for migrant domestic workers. However, the law has been in its drafting stage for the past three years, she said.

"The law needs to balance the rights and obligations of both the employer and employee. It also needs to explicitly guarantee that migrant domestic workers are allowed to keep their passports, have freedom of movement, a day off outside the employer's house, adequate private lodging and fair wages. It also needs to establish criteria of what a potential employer must have and include specific provisions on how recruitment agencies are to conduct their work and be monitored," she added.

Shahinian will present her full findings next year on a visit to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

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