Migrant Rights has extensively covered the abuses of female domestic workers in Lebanon. Now, some of these women are summoning the courage to fight back against their abusers by bringing legal cases against them. This article in AFP tells the story of 22 year old Nanda, a Sri Lankan woman who is on…
Archive for January, 2010
Abused Migrant Women in Lebanon Fight Back
January 29th, 2010
Housemaids Lebanon Legal cases Women
HRW-NYU Coalition Protect Workers’ Rights In Abu Dhabi
January 28th, 2010
New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Coalition for Fair Labor at New York University (NYU) have launched a campaign calling on NYU to make migrant worker protection a priority in upcoming negotiations with Abu Dhabi authorities responsible for the development and construction...
Saudi mulls ban on Asian housemaids because they ‘don’t understand our culture’
January 27th, 2010
Saudi Arabia is mulling a ban on housemaids from certain Asian countries because they are ‘not able to adapt to local culture and tradition’ and are becoming too problematic, according to this article in the Arab News. This seems a rather preposterous claim given that many of the problem...
Abused and Injured Filipino Maid Trapped in Lebanon
January 27th, 2010
Abusive employers Housemaids Lebanon Rape
The following ordeal of an abused Filipino worker is all too common in Lebanon. As we and others have documented, suicides by maids in Lebanon is an unfortunate result of this sort of abuse and feeling of helplessness. Gina (not her real name) is a 21-year-old Filipino who was brought to work in Leb...
New HRW Report Slams Gulf States for Migrant Abuses
January 26th, 2010
Bahrain Documentation General Gulf Kuwait News Saudi Arabia UAE
Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2010 is out now, and strongly condemns the Gulf states for failing to protect the rights of Migrant Workers. The full report is available here. The HRW report raises the issues of passport confiscation, abuses of domestic workers and bans on trade unions as ke...
Philippines President Arroyo Please Kuwait to Spare Life of Citizen Condemned to Death
January 25th, 2010
Ms. Jakatia Pawa, a Filipino domestic worker, was setenced on April 13, 2008 to capital punishment for murder of her employer’s 22 year old daughter. The Kuwait Court of Appeals has upheld the death verdict of the Kuwait Court of First Instance on Jakatia Pawa, the Filipino household ser...
Thousands of Indonesians Go Without Pay in Mid East
January 24th, 2010
Thousands of Indonesian workers in the Middle East have stopped working because they have not received their salaries, according to this article from Malaysia’s national news bureau. Indonesia recently ran a programme to repatriate over 2000 ‘problem’ migrant workers from Gulf cou...
Jordan: Bodies of Two Asian Women Found in Dumpster
January 23rd, 2010
Jordanian police found two bodies of Asian workers in dumpster today near Amman, AFP reported. The Jordanian police spokesman Mohammad Khatib said that “police recovered the bodies of two young women of Asian appearance from a public waste bin in the Jubeiha district, north of Amman, on Friday...
UAE: Employer Blackmails his Former Indian Worker
January 23rd, 2010
Despite the fact that withholding of passports and blackmail are illegal in the UAE, it seems that there is a second set of rules when it comes to migrant workers. An Indian worker and his family are suffering greatly because the UAE doesn’t bother enforcing its own laws. Pravin (not his real ...
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