Lebanon is home to an estimated 250,000 migrant domestic workers, most of them women from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka. Their labor sustains households across the country, yet their rights are systematically denied under the Kafala system, a sponsorship system which regulates the employment and immigration status of migrant workers. For decades, public discourse, international aid programs, and even government statements have framed the situation of migrant domestic workers in the language of “protection.” Shelters are established, hotlines are advertised, and NGOs are celebrated for “rescuing” workers in distress.
But protection is not justice. Protection does not compel an employer to pay withheld wages, or hold a recruitment agency responsible for illegal fees, or prosecute an abuser for violence and confinement. The urgent question, then, is not how to better “protect” migrant domestic workers. The question is far more uncomfortable, and far more necessary: Who will take responsibility for the exploitation of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, and for the impunity that allows it to continue?
The language of protection and its limits
The discourse of “protection” has become the dominant frame for addressing migrant domestic work in Lebanon. Humanitarian actors speak of the need to “protect” workers from abusive employers. Grassroots organizations and communities highlight “protective shelters” as evidence of intervention. International agencies fund awareness campaigns about rights and risks, couched in the language of protection. Yet protection, as currently understood, does little to transform the structures that harm workers. It is palliative, not preventative. At best, it provides temporary safety; at worst, it masks the absence of accountability. Workers are treated as passive recipients of charity rather than active rights-holders entitled to redress.
Without legal remedies and enforceable rights, ‘protection’ becomes another word for containment. It offers survival, not justice
Consider the testimony of Sara, an Ethiopian woman: “I worked three years without a salary. When I asked for help, I was taken to a shelter. But my wages? They were gone. No one made my employer pay.” Here, protection provided a bed and a roof, but no justice. For others, protection even reinforces dependency. Rosa, a Filipina worker trapped in debt, explained: “The [recruitment] agency said they were protecting me. But they also said I could not leave until I paid them back. They called this protection.”
These stories reveal the hollowness of protection when it is not linked to accountability. Without legal remedies and enforceable rights, “protection” becomes another word for containment. It offers survival, not justice.
Impunity within the Kafala system
At the heart of Lebanon’s domestic work regime lies the Kafala system, through which a local employer sponsors a foreign worker, granting them permission to work and reside in the country. By tying a worker’s residency to a single employer, Kafala grants near-total control over a worker’s legal status, movement, and employment conditions, making it difficult for workers to change jobs or leave the country without the employer’s permission. This framework does not simply enable abuse; it normalizes impunity. Employers can withhold wages, confiscate passports, and confine workers inside homes, all with the knowledge that the state rarely intervenes.
For many women, this impunity defines their daily lives. Maryam, a Kenyan worker, recalled: “When I escaped after months of beating, I went to the police. They told me I was illegal, not my employer. I was the one treated as a criminal.” Instead of investigating her complaint, authorities prioritized her immigration status in light of her ‘escape’ from her employer, and her now residing in the country without perceivably ‘legal’ status. Her employer remained untouched, and Maryam was detained.
Recruitment agencies, too, operate with little oversight. These agencies are businesses that facilitate the employment of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, handling everything from recruitment and travel arrangements to placement and mediation between the worker and employer. They routinely charge exorbitant fees, fabricate contracts, and circulate workers without consent, often in conditions resembling debt bondage, the pledge of one’s services as security for repaying debt or other obligation. Rosa, a Filipina worker, explained: “The agency told me they were responsible for me, not the [Lebanese] government. But they also said I could not leave until I paid them back. I was always in debt.”
The Lebanese state, meanwhile, has consistently excluded domestic work from the labor law, reinforcing the idea that this sector is exceptional, unregulated, and effectively beyond the reach of accountability. Ministries deflect responsibility: the Labor Ministry claims it lacks jurisdiction; General Security prioritizes deportation over justice; the judiciary treats abuses as private disputes between employer and worker.
The result is a system in which accountability is absent at every level. Employers, agencies, and the state itself are all implicated, but none are answerable, migrant domestic workers remain trapped in cycles of abuse with no meaningful avenue for justice.
The accountability vacuum in practice
If the Kafala system institutionalizes impunity, the day-to-day pursuit of justice makes it visible. Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon face enormous structural barriers when seeking remedies. Access to courts is almost impossible: workers often lack Arabic-language legal support needed as proceedings take place in Arabic, cannot afford legal fees, and face intimidation by employers who hold their passports and residency permits. Even when cases are filed, workers are frequently deported before proceedings conclude, ensuring that justice is never delivered.
Police responses are equally revealing. Many officers dismiss complaints as “private matters” between employer and employee. Domestic spaces are wrongfully and unlawfully treated as beyond the reach of law, reinforcing the idea that abuse inside a household is not subject to legal scrutiny.
Alem, a young woman from Sierra Leone, recounted: “When my employer hit me, I went to the police station with help from a neighbor. The officer said, ‘This is your sponsor’s house. We cannot interfere.’ I was told to return and obey, or leave Lebanon.” When Alem sought justice, she was instead told to endure.
Recruitment agencies, too, fill the accountability vacuum with their own forms of control. Workers who flee abuse often end up back in agency offices, where they are pressured to return to employers or sent to new households without any investigation into prior mistreatment. Agencies operate as both gatekeepers and enforcers, while state oversight remains absent.
NGOs attempt to bridge the gap through shelters, mediation, and advocacy, but these interventions are palliative. They cannot compel wage recovery, prosecute abusers, or dismantle systemic exploitation. The result is a circular logic: the state insists workers are “protected” by humanitarian or NGO mechanisms, while those very mechanisms exist only because the state refuses to enforce accountability. Protection, in practice, becomes a substitute for justice.
Why moving from protection to accountability matters
Shifting the frame from protection to accountability is not just a matter of language; it is a matter of justice. Protection asks, How can we shield workers from harm? Accountability asks, Why was harm allowed to occur? Who failed in their duty to prevent it? What redress exists for those whose rights were violated?
This distinction matters because protection, as it has been practiced in Lebanon, reinforces dependency. Workers are “rescued” from abusive households and offered shelter, but rarely wages. They are “protected” from violence, but often at the cost of detention or deportation. In this framing, the worker remains an object of care, not a subject of rights.
In the end, moving beyond protection is about refusing to accept survival as enough
Accountability, by contrast, recognizes migrant domestic workers as full rights-holders. It demands enforceable mechanisms to prosecute abusers, regulate agencies, and hold the state responsible for oversight. It shifts the burden of responsibility away from the worker (who must “escape,” “seek protection,” or “prove abuse”) and onto the structures that normalize impunity.
This is not only a labor issue. Lebanon’s treatment of migrant domestic workers mirrors the country’s wider crisis of accountability: from corruption and mismanagement to the Beirut Port explosion, impunity is the rule rather than the exception. To demand accountability for domestic workers is therefore to confront a broader political culture that privileges power over justice. In the end, moving beyond protection is about refusing to accept survival as enough.
Toward an accountability agenda
What would accountability look like in practice? For migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, accountability requires moving beyond piecemeal fixes and confronting the structural conditions that allow abuse to persist. It means shifting responsibility back to the state, where it belongs.
First, Lebanon must extend its labor law protections to include domestic work. The current exclusion is a legal fiction that legitimizes exploitation. Sara’s case, three years of unpaid wages without recourse, would have been treated as a clear violation had she been employed in any other sector. Accountability requires that domestic workers have the same rights as all other workers: contracts that are enforceable, wages that can be recovered, and legal protections against dismissal or confinement.
Second, recruitment agencies must be strictly regulated and held liable for malpractice. Stories like Rosa’s, trapped in debt by an agency that claimed ownership over her fate, demonstrate the urgent need for licensing, oversight, and penalties. Agencies that deceive, traffic, or extort workers must be shut down, not tolerated.
Accountability […] is about building a system where the state enforces rights, perpetrators face consequences, and migrant domestic workers can stand before the law as rights-holders, not supplicants
Third, justice must be accessible. Workers like Maryam and Alem show how abuses are dismissed by police and judges as “private” matters. Training law enforcement to treat violence, confinement, and wage theft as crimes (not contractual disputes) is essential. Moreover, workers should not risk deportation for seeking justice. Legal pathways to remain during proceedings are a minimum requirement for accountability.
Finally, Lebanon must signal international commitment by ratifying and implementing ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. While ratification alone will not end abuse, it would embed the principle that domestic work is work, deserving of equal protection, dignity, and justice.
Accountability is not about adding more shelters or hotlines. It is about building a system where the state enforces rights, perpetrators face consequences, and migrant domestic workers can stand before the law as rights-holders, not supplicants.
Migrant domestic workers are not asking for pity. As one worker put it plainly: “I don’t want protection. I want the law to see me.” Until accountability becomes the foundation of Lebanon’s approach, protection will remain a hollow promise. What is needed now is not rhetoric, but the rule of law, and a state willing to uphold it.
Jasmin Lilian Diab is a Senior Inclusive Economies Associate at TIMEP, focusing on migration.