Migrant workers in Lebanon

Thanks to the African blogger, black looks, for pointing out the plight of the tens of thousands of “African and South Asian migrants amongst the displaced in Lebanon. Unlike other foreign nationals from the Middle East and the West, who have been evacuated by their respective governments, this group have largely been left to fend for themselves without money or papers. Many of them at the lowest strata of society and in a foreign land. It is estimated that there are some 20,000 Ethiopians as well as Nigerians, Ghanaians, Sudanese, Somalis, Sri Lankans and the largest group (90,000) Filipinos working in domestic servitude, as migrant or forced labour and the sex industry in Lebanon.”

Some but not all of these migrants workers are part of an international industry in people trafficking. As I have pointed out before there are some 12.3 million slaves in the world today. As Black Looks describes it: “In Africa as elsewhere in the South, the majority poor and dispossessed subsidise the lifestyle of the minority world enabled by a system of dehumanization based on cultural, religious, ethnic and racial difference. Psychologically it is easier to oppress someone who is regarded as different and with whom you can distance yourself. In this way, Nigerian children are taking to Senegal to work in domestic servitude and Senegalese children are taken to Ghana. One ethnic group becomes forced labour or sexual slaves for another in a tit for tat series of exchanges that encompasses the whole world. Going outside one’s own community also makes it more difficult for those trafficked to escape. The further you take someone away from their home the more difficult it is for them to find their way back - trapped in distance, language, culture, bonded-debt and in the case of Lebanon abandoned in a war zone thousands of miles from home.”