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Ethiopia bans economic migrations to Lebanon
May 2, 2008 (ADDIS ABABA) — Celebrating Labor Day on Thursday, Ethiopia officially banned all travels its citizens make to Beirut in search of jobs, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs disclosed.
Ethiopia passed the bill after it conducted a thorough analysis into the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Lebanon while in duty as maids.
“Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimize the dangers of human rights abuses on our citizens,” said Zenebu Tadesse, Deputy State Minister for Labor and Social Affairs.
During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have been killed in Beirut by their employers.
Past human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women died between 1997 and 1999 alone in Beirut while working. Many were never heard from again and many others remain very difficult to trace because their employers change their Christian name to let them in to the country as Muslims.
The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.
Every year, thousands of Ethiopian women, lured by the promise of lucrative jobs and comfortable lives, are shipped out to Middle Eastern countries where they end up trapped in prison-like conditions and where their voices are never heard.
Lebanon is the most popular destination for Ethiopian domestic servants, followed by Bahrain, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Estimations indicate that there are over 50,000 Ethiopians working in Beirut, mainly women who work as house maids hoping to bring change on life conditions of themselves and their families who are back at home praying every day for them for their safe return. Over 100,000 Ethiopian workers are believed to be working in the Arab countries of the Middle East.
According to the Ethiopia Women Association, Ethiopian women in Middle Eastern countries are facing the worst kind of human rights abuses: "They are subjected to beatings, denied earned wages, forced to toil without sleep, raped by employers, have parts of their bodies seared in boiling oil by wives of their employers, grilled with hot irons, and thrown out of high-rise windows.” As a result, many are driven to despair and end up mental sickness and sometimes suicide.
1 comments:
The middle east is not a warm welcome place for foreigners, visibly there is a tense form of discrimination and racist behaviour out there.
It is a pesistant shame on us humanity to change the form of slavery into another one and process to the slow killing of the young ethiopian girls. The last village of the middle east mostly lebanon, yemen, jordan still has ethiopian slaves locked up. Please, please check it out and give them a chance to go home. I pray my God to help me win a LOTTO, I WILL BUY TICKET TO ALL ETHIOPIANS AND SRI LANKANS AND PHILIPINES LADIES TO GO HOME...ENOUGH WITH HUMAN TRAFFICK AND SLAVERY IN SNEAKY FORMS
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