Lebanon’s Political Economy: From Predatory to Self-Devouring

Human Rights Watch has warned that millions of people in the country are at risk of famine.Among poor Lebanese, suicides due to insolvency and desperation have surged. Meanwhile, domestic migrant workers, already subject to the (sponsorship) system and often living in appalling conditions, are increasingly abandoned outside their countries’ embassies by “sponsors” who can no longer afford to pay them. The COVID-19 crisis accelerated Lebanon’s implosion and further harmed the country’s most vulnerable sectors of the population. And then, on August 4, the Beirut Port explosion brought the country to its knees.

10 Inequality in the Lebanese political economy has long manifested itself in the state’s treatment of refugees and migrant workers. The latter are discriminated against in countless ways, especially through the kafala sponsorship system—which critics describe as a modern form of slavery. See Amnesty International, “Lebanon: Abandoned Migrant Domestic Workers Must Be Protected,” June 3, 2020,

http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/lebanon-abandoned-migrant-domestic-workers-must-be-protected. See also Amnesty International, “Their House Is My Prison: Exploitation of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon,” 2019, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE1800222019ENGLISH.pdf.

English | January 17, 2021

GO TO THE SOURCE

COMMENTS

SUPPORT OUR WORK

We depend on your donation to fight for domestic workers in Lebanon.

GIVE NOW