How one woman is rescuing migrant workers trapped in Lebanon’s abusive kafala system

It is not entirely inaccurate, either, as she is responsible for the movement of hundreds of women across international lines. 

This movement could be loosely termed as “extra-judicial,” occurring, as it does, without any official involvement from a state department or NGO.

“I am in the process of registering to be an NGO, but I don’t want to slow everything down,” she tells me when we meet in Achrafieh, “and momentum is important to what we do.”

What she does, she does of her own volition and is only possible because of the private donations of friends and — through online fundraising — from strangers all around the world.

Since Israel ceased its airstrikes on Beirut in December 2023, Dea and her team have successfully repatriated more than 130 migrant workers from Sierra Leone — all of them women and babies — back to their home countries. 

Crucially, each one of them wanted to go home. 

That may sound like an absurd qualification, but, as is the norm for many migrant workers in Lebanon — especially those from Africa — once they arrive here, they have little choice in anything.

“It began for me after the port explosion in August 2020. 

Around Beirut I was suddenly seeing all these Kenyan women stranded, homeless, sleeping on the streets. Sometimes with babies. I couldn’t understand what was happening. Why did nobody help them?  I just stopped my car and started talking to them. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

What she did hear was stories of abject abandonment, and in many cases, abuse.

In layman’s terms, Lebanon has an unhealthy obsession with domestic workers. 

Many families who cannot otherwise afford what we might term “luxury goods” will nonetheless hire domestic workers through agencies to work in their homes.

It is not unusual for these workers to live and sleep in a laundry room, which is “converted” into servants quarters. 

Those quarters are often little more than a mattress on the floor, with a washing machine or a toilet as a bedside table. 

The women work long hours and are often paid as little as $150 (€140) a month.

Within a few months of the August blast, Dea had raised funds and organised the flights home for the first 40 stranded domestic workers.

Last October, aware that the situation for these women would be worse than before, she was at it again. 

Dea immediately set about sourcing a location in Beirut that could provide emergency shelter for the abandoned workers. 

A trickle became a flow, and at its peak, the shelter housed and fed more than 375 women and children, serving over 35,000 meals.

It was pretty scary for them. The only location we could find was close to the worst of the airstrikes. There was a lot of tension between the women early on. But soon, you could see their personalities come through. We tried to empower the women as much as we could, allowing them to choose the food and work in groups.

The migrant labour system which supports these conditions is known as kafala and is widespread across Middle East and Gulf countries. 

Under this system, states such as Lebanon give employers sponsorship permits to bring in foreign workers.

These workers are then bound to their employers, a dynamic that leaves them exposed for gross exploitation. 

At its worst, kafala is viewed by scholars and human rights organisations as a form of modern day slavery.

Lebanon — and Beirut in particular — is a seductive place that most visitors grow to love. 

Spend any quality time here, however, and you will learn that kafala is its very dark secret. 

In 2021, UN Women estimated that 76% of the estimated 177,000 migrant workers and 99% of migrant domestic workers were women.

The majority of those women are now coming from West African countries like Sierra Leone and Cameroon. 

Typically, the women pay a fee to an agency in their home country, who then matches them (through another agency in Beirut) with a Lebanese household. 

The women have no say who their employer is. 

Normal practice allows the employer to take the worker’s passport. 

Exempt from Lebanon’s labour protections, they can be fired but can never quit.

“The agencies treat the girls like merchandise. It’s an open secret that households trade or sell these women between each other,” Dea continues, “and if the families aren’t happy, they sell them back to the original family or the agency. The women have no choice in any of it, and in many cases, they accept it, thinking it’s all they deserve.

It took me a whole month of being in the shelter with these women to convince them to call me ‘Dea’ — my name — and not ‘Madame.’ I am not their boss. Yet they are so trained to think a certain way we had to reshape the way they see other people.

This is not the case for every migrant domestic worker. 

Many households respect the “human contract” of the professional arrangement and pay a fair wage, do not withhold the workers documentation, and allow them to live away from where they work.

That this needs to be pointed out, however, only highlights the moral stain of the industry which — when you hear evidence of people being traded and sold between families — amounts to nothing more than the slavery it’s constantly accused of being.

During the early months of covid in 2020, as the country was in the early throes of economic disaster, suicides amongst migrant workers were high, though many went unreported by their employers. 

Many workers were abandoned, with families unwilling to pay them. 

The port blast in August the same year saw hundreds homeless on the streets without passports.

Dozens were thrown in prison, some of them with children, even pregnant. 

With few African embassies in Beirut, the consulates which should advocate for the rights of these women, are instead part of the problem, profiting handsomely as intermediaries for the agencies on either end.

Four years later, the plight of the domestic worker is no better. 

Demand — according to Dea — has grown, despite the continuing economic chaos. 

Israel’s war on Lebanon, which began in October ‘23, saw over 1.2m displaced, and, once again, it was the migrant workers who were abandoned first.

“We have at least one case in the South,” Dea explains, “where a woman was locked in the home of her employers, along with the pets. She was left for days and eventually killed in the bombardment.”

It’s a chilling thought that barely seems believable. Unless, of course, you’ve lived in Lebanon and witnessed first-hand the inequality and racism of the system up close.

Dea seeks no credit for the work she does for these women. 

She quickly points to the generosity of others in donating to the crowd-funding pages that raised tens of thousands of dollars to support the women, and the kindness and energy of volunteers who were so quick to help with feeding and administration. 

The latter takes so much time, she says, there is barely any room for the human side of helping.

After three months in the shelter, Dea and her team had made arrangements for more than 200 women and children to return to Sierra Leone, but some decided to stay and seek reemployment. 

Even during the bombing, many employers came to the shelter looking to “claim” their domestic workers as if it were a lost-and-found. 

In some cases, if they didn’t find them, they tried to take another by force.

“It got so bad, we had to get security. 

There is another side to this. Many of them want to stay and work and that is their absolute right.  What we try to do is offer them the choice and give them all the information. That way, if they do stay, they might be better equipped to live happily here.

Dea acknowledges the cooperation of the state security apparatus, GSS, was critical to the mission’s success. 

While there is no great societal or government appetite to reform or even dismantle kafala in Lebanon, the security services were happy to engage with her, understanding she was providing a solution the state was unable to.

“There is little will to reform things because it is a business that is so profitable for so many people here. There are so many problems in Lebanon, kafala is just another, and people would rather ignore it and deal with the others. The shelter kept these women off the streets and out of jail. So — bizarrely — I have a good relationship with them.”

For being so proactive and outspoken, Dea has faced many attacks from vested interests within agencies and consulates who tried to besmirch her good name, urging the women not to deal with her.

“For full transparency. I have an online tracking of all the donations received by everybody. It was over $55,000 on GoFundMe. I can show anybody anywhere where their money went and what it paid for.”

In the end, with bureaucracy impeding her efforts, Dea contacted UNHCR directly, and organised a chartered plane from Beirut to Freetown in Sierra Leone to take the women home.

“I have all the information, all the records on a database. I need to create an impact report. That’s the next step. I am not trained to do it, but I know it is important.

The shelter may be closed for now, but Dea’s work continues. 

Much of her time is devoted to ensuring the domestic workers who remained are housed in alternative accommodation and receiving proper healthcare.

There are clear signs, she tells me, showing evidence on her phone, that African women are receiving substandard medical treatment and surgeries, resulting in severe complications. 

Given their inability to advocate for themselves, Dea intervenes.

“There is a constant stream of requests, and there are more people than me helping them. 

"There are so many migrant workers left here, and there are more going to come. 

"All I can do is try and help and empower these women so that maybe they can help themselves.”