BEIRUT: Amnesty International on Wednesday urged Lebanon to end what it described as an “inherently abusive” migration sponsorship system governing the lives of tens of thousands of foreigners working in private homes.
Domestic workers in Lebanon are excluded from the labor law, and instead obtain legal residency though their employers’ sponsorship under the so-called “kafala” system.
But activists say this leaves the maids, nannies and carers at the mercy of their employers and unable to leave without their permission, including in numerous documented cases of abuse.
“Amnesty International is calling on the Lebanese authorities to end the kafala system and extend labor protections to migrant domestic workers,” the London-based rights group said.
“The Lebanese parliament should amend the labor law to include domestic workers under its protection,” including to allow them to join unions, the group said.
Lebanon hosts more than 250,000 registered domestic workers from countries in Africa and Asia, the vast majority of them women.
In a report released Wednesday titled “Their house is my prison,” Amnesty surveyed 32 domestic workers employed mostly in and around Beirut, revealing “alarming patterns of abuse.”
Among them, 10 women said they were not allowed to leave their employer’s house, with some saying they were locked in.
Twenty-seven said their employers had confiscated their passports.
Many worked overtime, 14 were not allowed a single day off each week, and several had their monthly salaries revoked or decreased, despite it being a breach of their contracts.
The labor ministry introduced a standard contract for domestic workers in 2009, but the forms are often written in Arabic, a language they cannot read.
The government in late 2018 said it had translated the contracts into several other languages.
Amnesty registered eight cases of forced labor and four of human trafficking, the report said.
Six reported severe physical abuse, while almost all had been subjected to humiliating treatment and several were deprived of food.
“Sometimes I would get so hungry... I used to mix water with sugar when I was hungry and drink it,” one worker said.
With the abuse taking a toll on their mental health, six said they had contemplated or attempted suicide.
Only four of those interviewed had private rooms, while the rest were relegated to living rooms, storage rooms, kitchens or balconies.
“There is a man in the house who can enter the living room any time he wants,” said one worker who was forced to sleep in the living room.
Activists accuse the Lebanese authorities of being lax in bringing abusive employers to account.
Ethiopia and the Philippines have banned their citizens from domestic work in Lebanon, but still their citizens find ways to come.
In 2008, Human Rights Watch found that migrant domestic workers in Lebanon were dying at a rate of more than one per week from suicide or in failed escapes.
Many other countries in the Arab world also follow the “kafala” system for household workers.
Amnesty urges Lebanon to help end domestic worker abuse
Amnesty urges Lebanon to help end domestic worker abuse
- Ethiopia and the Philippines have banned their citizens from domestic work in Lebanon, but still their citizens find ways to come
How succession works in Iran and who will be the country’s next supreme leader?
- An 88-member panel called the Assembly of Experts “must, as soon as possible” pick a new supreme leader under Iranian law
DUBAI: The death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after almost 37 years in power raises paramount questions about the country’s future. The contours of a complex succession process began to take shape the morning after Khamenei’s assassination.
Here is what to know:
A temporary leadership council assumes duties
As outlined in its constitution, Iran on Sunday formed a council to assume leadership duties and govern the country.
The council is made up of Iran’s sitting president, the head of the country’s judiciary and a member of the Guardian Council chosen by Iran’s Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader and settles disputes with parliament.
Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian and hard-line judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei are its members who will step in and “temporarily assume all the duties of leadership.”
A panel of clerics selects a new supreme leader
Though the leadership council will govern in the interim, an 88-member panel called the Assembly of Experts “must, as soon as possible” pick a new supreme leader under Iranian law.
The panel consists entirely of Shiite clerics who are popularly elected every eight years and whose candidacies are approved by the Guardian Council, Iran’s constitutional watchdog. That body is known for disqualifying candidates in various elections in Iran and the Assembly of Experts is no different. The Guardian Council barred former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate whose administration struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, from election for the Assembly of Experts in March 2024.
Khamenei’s son could be a possible contender
Clerical deliberations about succession and machinations over it take place far from the public eye, making it hard to gauge who may be a top contender.
Previously, it was thought Khamenei’s protégé, hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, may try to take the mantle. However, he was killed in a May 2024 helicopter crash. That has left one of Khamenei’s sons, Mojtaba, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, as a potential candidate, though he has never held government office. But a father-to-son transfer in the case of a supreme leader could spark anger, not only among Iranians already critical of clerical rule, but also among supporters of the system. Some may see it as un-Islamic and in line with creating a new, religious dynasty after the 1979 collapse of the US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s government.
A transition like this has happened only once before
There has been only one other transfer of power in the office of supreme leader of Iran, the paramount decision-maker since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In 1989, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died at age 86 after being the figurehead of the revolution and leading Iran through its bloody eight-year war with Iraq. This transition now comes after Israel launched a 12-day war against Iran in June 2025 as well.
The vast powers of a supreme leader
The supreme leader is at the heart of Iran’s complex power-sharing Shiite theocracy and has final say over all matters of state.
He also serves as the commander-in-chief of the country’s military and the powerful Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary force that the United States designated a terrorist organization in 2019 and which Khamenei empowered during his rule. The Guard, which has led the self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a series of militant groups and allies across the Middle East meant to counter the US and Israel, also has extensive wealth and holdings in Iran.
