MANILA: The Philippines on Wednesday lifted its ban on migrant workers heading to jobs in Kuwait, capping a diplomatic row sparked when a murdered Filipino maid was found in her employer’s freezer.
The news comes days after Kuwait and the Philippines inked a deal to regulate and protect the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who seek higher-paid employment in the wealthy Gulf state.
The spat, simmering for months, reached its lowest point in April when Kuwaiti authorities expelled Manila’s envoy over videos showing embassy staff helping Filipino workers flee allegedly abusive bosses in Kuwait.
“President (Rodrigo Duterte) directed me to lift the ban totally... both for the domestic and skilled professionals,” Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello.
“The president deemed that our overseas workers are protected in Kuwait and he will no longer see incidents of maltreatment, hopefully.”
Around 262,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, nearly 60 percent of them domestic workers, according to the Philippine foreign ministry.
They are among the millions of its citizens the Philippines has sent to work abroad, seeking salaries they cannot get in their relatively impoverished nation.
The money they send back home accounts for about 10 percent of the Philippine economy.
Duterte in February prohibited workers from heading to Kuwait when domestic helper Joanna Demafelis’s corpse was discovered in a freezer in her employer’s home.
The president lashed out at Kuwait, alleging Arab employers routinely rape Filipino workers, force them to work 21 hours a day and feed them scraps.
Relations appeared to recover after a Kuwaiti court sentenced to death in absentia a Lebanese man and his Syrian wife for Demafelis’s killing.
Following the verdict, Duterte announced plans to visit Kuwait to seal an agreement on workplace safety guarantees for the Filipinos working in the Gulf nation.
But after the rescue videos were released by the Philippine foreign ministry and Manila’s ambassador was ordered out of Kuwait, relations plunged again.
Duterte declared on April 30 that the ban on Filipino workers leaving for the Gulf nation was permanent and urged his citizens to come home if they were being mistreated.
Kuwait sought to calm the confrontation a day later, calling it largely the result of a misunderstanding. Tensions quickly cooled and the two nations on Friday reached an agreement on worker protections.
“Even our labor diplomacy has improved and our relationship and diplomatic ties are now stronger,” Bello said on Wednesday.
A copy of the agreement seen by AFP says that workers will be allowed to keep their passports and cellphones — often confiscated by employers.
It stipulates that contract renewals should be approved by the Philippine Overseas Labor Office, instead of being automatic.
Employers must also provide domestic workers with food, housing, clothing and health insurance, according to the document.
The lot of migrant workers is a sensitive issue in the Philippines that gets used domestically for political purposes.
The government has for decades hailed overseas workers as modern heroes but advocacy groups have highlighted the social cost of migration, tearing families apart and making Filipinos vulnerable to abuse.
Philippines lifts ban for Kuwait-bound workers
Philippines lifts ban for Kuwait-bound workers
- Around 262,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, nearly 60 percent of them domestic workers
- Contract renewals should be approved by the Philippine Overseas Labor Office, instead of being automatic
Gaza death toll far higher than initially reported: Lancet study
- Israel killed 25,000 more people by start of 2025 than was reported by authorities
- ‘It will be a long time before we get to a full accounting of all the people killed in Gaza, if we ever get there’
LONDON: The war in Gaza saw 25,000 more deaths in its first 16 months than authorities announced at the time, according to the Lancet.
Research published by the medical journal estimated that 75,000 deaths occurred between Oct. 7, 2023, and Jan. 5, 2025, including 42,200 women, children and elderly people.
The authors of the study published on Wednesday said: “The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict.”
Last month, an Israeli security officer told Israeli media that casualty figures published by Gaza’s health authorities were largely accurate, having previously downplayed or questioned their size, adding that around 70,000 people were thought to have been killed in Israeli assaults since Oct. 7, 2023.
Gaza’s health authorities say 71,660 people are confirmed to have died, including 570 since the singing of a ceasefire last October.
The new research suggests that those figures are below the reality. Using trained Palestinians on the ground in the enclave, it surveyed 2,000 Gazan families who were asked to provide details about members killed in the conflict.
One of the report’s authors, Prof. Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway, University of London, said the research found that 8,200 people also died in the surveyed period from “indirect” causes such as disease and hunger.
Despite covering the most intense period of the conflict, the study does not analyze anything beyond January 2025. In August, famine was declared in Gaza by UN-backed experts.
In November, a study conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research suggested that 78,318 people had been killed in the enclave by Dec. 31, 2024.
Its higher casualty rate was ascribed to a larger number of indirect fatalities, which contributed to life expectancy in Gaza dropping by 44 percent in 2023 and 47 percent in 2024.
“It will be a long time before we get to a full accounting of all the people killed in Gaza, if we ever get there,” said Spagat, who has studied conflict zones for 20 years.
