Patricia, who came to Lebanon from Sierra Leone a few years ago to work as a domestic in a house in southern Lebanon, never imagined she would be stuck in a conflict in the Middle East.
“I am scared. I want to go home. I came to Beirut in an ambulance from the southern port city of Tyre,” she told dpa in a shelter housing 200 domestic workers, who are stuck without their passports.
Numerous foreign domestic workers in Lebanon are trapped in the country as a result of the Israeli attacks.
“The house I was working in got bombed, and the lady I was working was so scared and me too,” she said, tears in her eyes.
A group of activists have set up a shelter for domestic workers stranded in Lebanon in a warehouse to help them cope with the conflict.
Lea Ghorayeb, one of the activists, told dpa that she was helping the migrants after they were left by their employers in the streets, amid shelling and without their passports or other official papers.
“Most of them do not have their passports. Most want to leave the country, but some of them do not have money to leave,” she said.
“When things settle down a bit, we will work to send those who are willing to leave to their countries and those who want to stay, we try to find some decent places for them to work,” Ghorayeb said.
Ghorayeb said that she and other activists installed a kitchen for the stranded workers, to enable them to cook their own food.
Foreign domestic workers are employed in Lebanon under the controversial Kafala system that ties migrants to a local sponsor.
Human rights activists describe the system as slavery. Many of the employers keep the employees’ passports. There have also been repeated reports of mistreatment of domestic employees, being locked inside the houses where they work, or made to work seven days a week.
According to the UN Organization for Migration (IOM), the women mainly come from countries such as Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
“I do not want die. I am so scared, all I want is go back home,” Fatima from Sierra Leone, said as she held her sister’s 3-year-old son.
