Foreign Embassies Have Failed Their Citizens in Lebanon. LevantX Investigates.

“I am scared. I am scared a lot.”

Ester Wamgui sits on a dirt-stained mattress lying on the street outside the Kenyan Consulate of Beirut. She cradles her son Jame in her arms while she seeks shelter from the August sun in the shade of a nearby building. Her daughter Judy sits next to her drawing on a scrap of paper with a yellow highlighter.

“There has been no food or water from the Kenyan Consulate. Only from well-wishers,” she says. These “well-wishers” are local Lebanese NGOs and passers-by. They have been delivering food, water, and sanitary products to Ester and the fifty other women that sit outside the Consulate as often as they can, but the supplies are running out.

Sitting in the open air outside the Consulate may mitigate the risks of catching Covid-19 but even so, many women do not have access to the masks and hand sanitizer they desperately need. NGOs deliver what they can but supplies are scarce, and the domestic workers only receive what is left at the end of the day. It is not enough to go round. 

Women receive sanitary products

There are around 250,000 migrant workers living in Lebanon. Some work illegally, but most are employed under the country’s Kafala sponsorship system. This system fuses a worker to one employer and in the process, their rights and agency are removed. The employer takes hold of the worker’s passport and they can only be fired, they can never quit. This in turn often leads to abuses according to Amnesty International:

“Although paying workers on time, providing accommodation, and covering the cost of tickets to return home are stipulated in the current unified standard contract, in the absence of any enforcement mechanism, employers often breach the contract and go unpunished.”

Lebanon’s economic collapse, the Covid-19 outbreak, and the devastating explosion in the port have left many Lebanese families struggling to support themselves financially. Following the explosion in the port of Beirut on 4th August 2020 - when 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded, killing around 211 people and leaving thousands injured - many migrant domestic workers suddenly found themselves out of work. With the apartments they worked in damaged beyond repair and their employers unable to pay them, these workers were dumped outside their respective embassies and consulates with no money, no clothes, and no way of getting home.

These domestic workers have been the first victims of Lebanon’s economic demise, often finding themselves being dropped unceremoniously on the street to the shocked stares of the other workers already waiting outside the consulate. One particularly shocking video posted on the internet shows the moment a smart silver Mercedes drops off a Kenyan domestic worker with a single plastic bag of clothes before speeding off down the street. Other Kenyan ladies waiting outside the consulate witness the event and begin to kick the car and hurl abuse at the driver. A young Kenyan woman is recorded addressing the camera as she explains what has happened:

“The girl is sick and [her employer] refuses to pay her, and she bring her here. How can you drop a person in the street? It’s haram!”

A Kenyan domestic worker waits in Beruit, Lebanon.

These scenes were commonplace in the weeks and months after the blast. The shocking scene of the sick Kenyan woman being dumped outside of the Consulate could easily have taken place outside the Ethiopian Consulate, the Consulate of Sierra Leone, the Consulate of Ghana, the Nigerian Embassy, the Embassy of the Philippines… the list goes on.

In May 2020 a domestic worker from the Philippines took her own life while being housed in the embassy shelter. Concerns had been raised just days before about the conditions that she and another 25 maids had been living in as they waited for flights back home.

In the months leading up to the explosion in the port, Médecins Sans Frontières in Beirut set up a helpline that any domestic worker could call for mental health care. In the first two months of the line being open, 16 psychiatric cases were identified amongst the 52 mental health requests. Of those 16 cases, seven had to be hospitalized with psychosis.

“At least 40 percent of all women who called us for mental health care had been victims of physical or sexual abuse,” said Evita Mouawad, advocacy manager at MSF’s Dora project.

Since the explosion in the port in August, many domestic workers have been repatriated. According to the Embassy of the Philippines, 3000 of their citizens have flown home. The same figure has been repatriated to Ghana. Of the Kenyan and Sierra Leonean women, it is believed to be in the hundreds. However, it is hard to know exact figures as some women have left by their own means and some have been smuggled out. What is known, is that the money for the Kenyan and Sierra Leonean women’s flights, clothes, and suitcases has been raised by NGOs and charities both in Lebanon and abroad. The embassies have not contributed.

Money has always been problematic between the embassies and their citizens in Lebanon. Especially the Kenyan embassy.

The Kenyan Consulate in Lebanon is an honorary one, overseen by the Kenyan Embassy in Kuwait. Sayed Chalouhi and his assistant, Kassem Jaber, are Lebanese citizens appointed by Kenya as honorary Consul and Consular assistants respectively. Sayed Chalouhi is neither a Kenyan citizen nor a career diplomat, but a lawyer in Lebanon. Both Chalouhi and Jaber have been accused of gross human rights violations by domestic workers here in Lebanon but being Lebanese citizens has allegedly given them impunity from prosecution.

Farah Baba of the NGO, Anti-Racism Movement (ARM), told LevantX that she had been given testimony by multiple women that Chalouhi had set up an unofficial bank inside the Consulate of Kenya.

“Migrant workers are not able to set up their own bank accounts in Lebanon and so Chalouhi offered to hold the Kenyan women’s salaries for them inside the consulate.”

He told the women that they could not trust their Lebanese employers. He reassured them that he was their consul and that he wanted what was best for them. He said that their money would be in a safe place and that when they wanted to leave the country they could come and get it.

According to Ms. Baba, when the women wanted to leave Lebanon just after the explosion and asked for their money, Chalouhi refused to give it to them. He told them that he had to increase the price of their repatriation and that everything had to be paid in US dollars. Given that the Lebanese pound is pegged to the dollar and had fallen against it by 80%, this made the cost of leaving exorbitant suddenly. He told the women they had to pay him more.

Standing outside the consulate while waiting to be repatriated, Teresa Wambui told LevantX that Kassem Jaber had sent threatening texts to the women after they demanded their money back. These texts threatened the women with arrest if they spoke out. This was later backed up by the testimony Baba received:

“He would threaten to go to general security to tell them that these women were illegal and so they would be fined or jailed.”

A number of Kenyan women later told ARM that Chalouhi allegedly told them that if they could not pay, he could help them get into sex work to earn more US Dollars. The women believed that the Kenyan Consulate in Lebanon had become involved in sex trafficking.

Both Ms. Baba and Ms. Wambui told LevantX that a Kenyan woman named Eunice Wamechi had worked as an assistant in the Consulate in Beirut. While she was there, she uncovered evidence of the Consulate’s abuses over the years and kept the evidence on her phone. When Chalouhi found this out he sent the Cyber Crime Bureau to her house to arrest her.

The Cyber Crime Bureau arrived at her house, where she lived with her partner and child, and confiscated her phone. They took her in for questioning and then attempted to arrest her. Fortunately, a lawyer who works with ARM was close by that day and managed to intervene to prevent the arrest.

“The lawyer successfully argued that the Cyber Crime Bureau was not meant to be arresting people and that it was up to the General Security,” Ms. Baba said.

The Kenyan consulate in Beirut, Lebanon.

Responding to a report by CNN in July 2020 on allegations of extortion, the Embassy of Kenya in Kuwait said in a statement that the Consul in Beirut had done his best in serving the Kenyans and that the welfare of the Diaspora forms a critical component of the Embassy’s work.

“The Embassy therefore remains seized of the matter and is optimistic that with the cooperation of the Kenyan community members, the issues of concern will be addressed soon.”

The Kenyan Consulate was approached for comment but have yet to respond.

During this period in July and August of 2020, things were no better at the Ethiopian embassy. One migrant worker, who did not wish to be named for fear of arrest, told LevantX that the embassy had actively cooperated with Lebanese families to return any domestic workers who had fled abusive households. Stories of verbal and physical abuse are common in Lebanon, as are stories of sexual assault.

A 2016 International Labour Organisation report found that of the 1,541 migrant domestic workers interviewed in the Beirut and Mount Lebanon governorates, 2% (29 cases) reported being sexually abused. However, the report goes on to acknowledge that due to the underreporting of abuses, because of the social stigma that can often accompany it, the actual figure was likely to be much higher.

Along with instances of sexual assault, LevantX was told by Ms. Wambui that four Kenyan women had gone missing since 2014 and that their bodies had never been found. Ms. Wambui insisted that she had searched everywhere for her friends and had even set up a Facebook group, but had not found anyone.

“We looked in the hospitals and the mortuaries but found nothing.”

Ms. Baba said that Ethiopian women make up the biggest migrant community here in Lebanon and that stories of their deaths were common.

“Usually, they don’t know how she died, but of course a lot of the time it’s the employer who pushed her off the balcony or something. There is no investigation even though the security forces claim that they would open an investigation. It never happens and there is never a follow-up.”

“They just ignore us when we demand an update,” she added.

The current Covid-19 pandemic has pushed many hospitals in Lebanon to breaking point. Space is scarce in every part of the building. So even when the bodies can be found, hospitals often ask for money to hold the body while funerals are arranged or ask for money for the body to be released. Migrant communities try to pool their resources to get their friends released and sent home but with many of them out of work, it is often beyond their means. This prevents the bodies of many young women from being repatriated to their home countries and returned to their families.  

When the Embassy of Bangladesh was questioned about its plans to repatriate its citizens, ARM found them to be particularly unhelpful.

 “Our meetings with them have not been very pleasant,” said Ms. Baba. “They do not want to help anyone who is undocumented and cannot afford [repatriation]. Even the ones who are documented and are able to pay, they want them to go through the embassy. So that the embassy can take the money.”

It is a similar scenario over at the Embassy of Sri Lanka. ARM has been trying to meet with the Embassy for exactly three months, at the time of writing this article, but they have not responded to their requests for a meeting. Ms. Baba understands that the government in Sri Lanka is insisting that only two airline companies handle the repatriation and that everything be paid in US Dollars. Effectively monopolizing the situation against its citizens in Lebanon.

This monopolization has created a phenomenon known as reverse remittance. Instead of migrant workers sending money home to their families in Sri Lanka, the situation has forced their families to sell land at home in order to send money to their loved ones in Lebanon. 

The explosion on the 4th of August brought the world’s media attention to Beirut. As the international media searched for more stories on the ground the plight of the migrant worker’s was suddenly thrust into the limelight. Where the embassies and consulates had ignored their citizens’ pleas for repatriation before, suddenly they took a proactive interest in their citizen’s welfare.

Women distribute sanitary products to other people hit by the Covid-19 Crisis.

According to Ms. Baba, the Embassy of the Philippines has been the best at repatriating its citizens and the Nigerian Embassy has been trying to mediate between employers and migrant workers for the payment of their salaries.

A new Consul General, Temesgen Oumer Furikam, was appointed to the Embassy of Ethiopia in the early autumn of 2020. Since then, the embassy has been more proactive at helping its citizens here in Lebanon. Including setting up shelters for those out of work and with no home, negotiating an increased number of monthly exit visas, and urging the Lebanese government to improve the rights of domestic workers. 

In a recent interview, Mr. Oumer Furikam expressed the need for domestic workers in Lebanon to have equal rights:

“There should be an equal contract…. But with the Kafala system, the customary practice of sponsorship is to keep the passport.”

“But this is not a document of the Lebanese government or the sponsor, it is a document of the Ethiopian government. It is the right of the person to keep it with them.” He added.

Despite these incremental steps by the Embassies and Consulates in Lebanon to help their citizens, payment for repatriation has been left largely to local NGOs and those on the ground in their respective countries. According to Rahel Zegeye from the NGO Mesewat, which supports migrant workers in Lebanon and the Middle East, Ethiopian migrants that return home receive three days of counseling but there is no follow-up. After those three days, Rahel believes those returning are forgotten about. She also told LevantX that the orthodox church in Canada has paid for the plane tickets of 40 migrants to return home. The church also offers financial support for transportation once they are home but it is not sufficient:

“It’s nothing. Maximum fifty dollars. So not too much for transportation from Addis Ababa to their homes far away.”

Mesewat itself has paid for most of the Covid-19 PCR tests of those returning to Ethiopia. Two NGOs named Survivors Network and Human Is Right are helping women in Cameroon with business training once they return home. In Ghana and Kenya, the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) has been helping with “income-generating activities” and has been providing legal assistance to those who have filed lawsuits against former employers in Lebanon. However, the IOM only supports those whose repatriation it has paid for itself.

According to Ms. Baba, governments have been absent in almost every case of those repatriated and it is grassroots organizations that have been the driving forces in raising funds and spreading awareness. It is usually these organizations, and the good will of the Lebanese people, that pay for the flights, clothes, and suitcases of those escaping desperate situations in Lebanon to be reunited with their loved ones back home. 

Despite the dire situation migrant workers face, and the fact that many countries have put a ban on their citizens traveling to Lebanon for work because of the Kafala system, people are still arriving in the hopes of finding work and providing for their families back home. They often travel to Lebanon illegally, with many being smuggled in, negating any official statistics from being recorded. However, it is a risk people are still willing to take in the hope of finding a better future. It is a fact which concerns ARM and Ms. Baba:

“We know that people are still coming. We don’t know the number or the nationality, but we do know that people are still coming, and the situation is only getting worse in Lebanon.”