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On December 9, 2009, a Lebanese criminal court sentenced a Lebanese woman to 15 days in
jail for repeatedly beating Jonalin Malibago, her Filipina maid, three years earlier. Lebanese
newspapers hailed the case a landmark victory for the country’s estimated 200,000 migrant
domestic workers (MDWs), many of whom report abuse at the hands of their employers. The
case illustrated the positive role that the judiciary can play in protecting MDWs, even though
the sentence was lenient given the violation. But it also raised at least one significant
question: was the Malibago verdict a rare instance of an employer being held to account for
abuses against MDWs or was it part of a broader pattern of successful prosecutions?
This report seeks to answer that question. To do so, Human Rights Watch reviewed 114
Lebanese judicial decisions in which MDWs were either plaintiffs or defendants, and
interviewed MDWs who reported abuse as well as lawyers who regularly take up their cases.
It finds that the Lebanese judicial system is failing to protect the rights of MDWs, and that
while Malibago’s case is by no means unique in holding an employer accountable for
mistreatment, too many other workers do not receive justice.
Lebanese families employ an estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers, primarily from
Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and Nepal. These women typically migrate on short-term
contracts and are obliged to live in the home of their employer as a condition of their work
visa, sending much of what they earn to family or loved ones back home: for example, MDWs
in Lebanon sent more than $90 million overseas in the first half of 2009. The domestic
worker sector is rife with complaints of nonpayment of wages, excessive working hours,
forced confinement, and even physical and sexual abuse—fueled by Lebanese labor law that
excludes MDWs from standard labor protections afforded to almost all other categories of
workers, such as the right to a weekly day of rest, paid leave, benefits, and worker
compensation. Desperate, some try to run away, often with serious consequences: Human Rights Watch documented an alarming number of deaths of domestic workers, primarily
from suicide or from risky escape attempts from high stories of residential buildings.
Lebanon’s judiciary has both the potential and obligation to play an important role in
protecting the basic rights of MDWs. However, this potential has so far remained unfulfilled,
and the judicial system remains, albeit with exceptions, largely inaccessible and
unresponsive. Such problems are not limited to MDWs: many Lebanese also suffer from
lengthy pre-trial detentions, extended trials, and overloaded courts. However, MDWs face
particular obstacles in accessing the justice system.
A number of factors mean that MDWs often do not file or pursue complaints against their
employers, or else settle on unfavorable terms. These include lack of judicial support, fear of
counter charges and being held in detention, and restrictive visa policies that make it hard
for MDWs to see through cases that can take months –and often years– to wind through the
protracted judicial process. For many, the need to earn money to support their families, and
the impulse of abused workers to return home quickly, may also prompt them to withdraw
their complaints rather than seek redress. A Human Rights Watch review of 13 criminal cases
that MDWs brought against employers found they took an average of 24 months to be
resolved, while MDW complaints for unpaid wages filed in civil courts lasted between 21 and
54 months. Complaints brought before labor courts, which are supposedly faster than
regular civil courts because their procedures are simpler, lasted 32 months on average.
At the center of the judicial failure to protect MDWs is the country’s kafeel, or sponsorship
system that ties a migrant worker to his or her specific employer. MDWs lose their legal
status if their sponsor terminates their contract, or if they decide to leave their employers
(even if they have legitimate reasons to quit, such as non-payment of wages or abuse).
Accordingly, a MDW who leaves an employer and files a complaint against him or her loses
the right to work and faces potential detention and deportation. Some MDWs can seek
refuge in shelters run by NGOs or embassies while their case is pending but places in
shelters are limited and immigration laws restrict their freedom of movement. Lebanese
courts have on occasion allowed MDWs to return home while their lawyers follow-up on the
criminal case against abusive employers. However, such cases remain limited, especially
since many MDWs do not have a lawyer.
Another obstacle for MDWs seeking redress is a lack of accessible mechanisms, such as
telephone hotlines where MDWs could report abuse, and units within the Ministry of Labor
or security forces that specialize in such cases. In a welcome move, the Minister of Labor on
June 1, 2010, announced a new hotline at the ministry to receive complaints from MDWs and
other workers. However, as of July 7, 2010, it had yet to receive a single call from a domestic worker, possibly because the Ministry has not disseminated information about the hotline
within communities of MDWs.
Even if they do complain, MDWs often face official inaction on the part of police and judicial
authorities, which have failed to treat certain allegations as potential crimes, dealt with
some complaints meekly, or else ignored them entirely. Human Rights Watch did not find
any example amongst the 114 cases it reviewed of authorities prosecuting employers
accused of overworking workers, locking them inside homes, confiscating passports, or
denying food. In one example, a Kenyan domestic worker told the police that her employer
locked her in the house when she would leave—which the employer admitted doing in her
police deposition. However, rather than filing charges for the offense of “deprivation of
liberty” (Art. 569 of Penal Code), the prosecutor simply told the police to “obtain an
undertaking from the employer to prepare all the paperwork of the maid and to pay her
salary, and not exact revenge against the worker.”1
In cases where MDWs complained about employers failing to hand over passports or other
identity papers, the courts dismissed the complaint, or simply asked the employer to return
the document. Even then, there was little follow-up to ensure compliance, and no employer
was prosecuted for his or her behavior in any case that Human Rights Watch reviewed.
Accepting the argument of employers that it is legitimate to hold an employee’s passport to
prevent her from running away, judges have rejected attempts by activists and lawyers to
challenge passport withholding on the grounds that it amounts to “deprivation of liberty”
(Hajez Huriyat). In 2001, an investigative judge in Beirut dismissed a complaint brought by
two women from Madagascar against their recruitment agency for “confiscation of
passport,” reasoning that “it is natural for the employer to confiscate the maid’s passport
and keep it with him, in case she tries to escape from his house to work in another without
compensating him.”2
Even violence against MDWs—including beating, slapping and punching—often fails to
garner the attention of police and prosecutors, who only prosecute extreme physical
violence when it is backed up by extensive medical reports. In December 2005, for example,
the Pastoral Committee for Afro Asian Migrants (PCAAM), a domestic worker rights group,
received information that a Sri Lankan domestic worker was being beaten, denied wages,
and locked in the house by her employer. PCAAM informed the prosecutor’s office, which
referred the complaint to police, who took 21 days to begin an investigation. In herdeposition, the Sri Lankan worker said her employer owed her seven months-worth of wages
($670), and beat her regularly. Confronted by police, the employer agreed to pay
outstanding wages, but faced no charges for the beatings.
Also deterring MDWs from filing complaints against employers for ill-treatment is the fact
that they may end up facing countercharges of theft, months in pre-trial detention, and trials
in which international standards of due process and fairness are not always respected.
Human Rights Watch reviewed 84 cases where MDWs were accused of a crime: in most (61
out of 84), the employer accused the MDW of theft. Other accusations included prostitution,
violence against the employer or third parties, or carrying false identification papers. At least
76 percent of the accused MDWs (64 out of the 84 cases) were detained before trial, even
when accused of stealing small amounts, often less than $1,500. Most MDWs who were
eventually found not guilty had been detained during trial for an average of three months
before being released, although at least four had spent more than eight months in jail before
a court found them not guilty.3

For the most part, a MDW must face the legal system without either adequate legal
representation or translation. Of the 84 criminal cases against MDWs reviewed, 37 (44
percent) did not have a defense lawyer. That number rises to 50 percent if one excludes
felony cases (jinayat) in the Criminal Court, where a defense lawyer is usually mandatory and
court-appointed.
Most MDWs (at least 57 of 84 cases) also face police and court proceedings without the help
of certified translators—despite the fact that many do not speak fluent Arabic and are
unlikely to understand the vocabulary used in a police interrogation or trial.4
Human Rights
Watch reviewed a number of police reports where the MDW indicated that she only speaks
“a little Arabic,” yet police proceeded with the interrogation anyway without an interpreter.
Even when translation is available, it is often ad hoc in nature: of 11 cases where court
documents and police reports clearly indicate an interpreter was present, three were official
sworn translators, one was a passerby, one was another migrant, three were provided by the
MDW’s embassy, two by the employer, and one by Caritas Migrant, a nongovernmental
organization (NGO). Interpreters were rare even in cases where the MDW was accused of a
serious crime: only seven out of 13 cases where the worker was accused of a felony had an
interpreter.