Lebanon’s Slave Trade: Recasting Migrant Domestic Work in the Courts

The 2009 standard contract for migrant domestic workers provides basic protections like monthly pay, weekly rest, paid sick leave, health insurance, and limits on working hours. However, the contract heavily favors employers in termination, as workers can only allowed to terminate for proven physical abuse or sexual assault, and passport confiscation is unaddressed. In practice, workers cannot leave or change employers without their employers’ consent, and are not entitled to the Labor Law protections on minimum wage, limits on working hours, a weekly rest day, overtime pay, or freedom of association.

Workers also have limited legal means to compel their employer to pay up if wages are withheld. More importantly, domestic workers’ exclusion from the labor law means that formal regulation of the industry such as the standard contract and jobsite monitoring critically lack enforcement.

“It’s like you are in custody, you are denied social rights,” said Julia, an African migrant domestic worker, speaking to BADIL.

While many domestic workers in Lebanon are not exploited, this is entirely at the goodwill of their employers. The kafala system is essentially a framework of legalized domination, creating a dynamic where “total dependency creates total vulnerability and opens the door wide to exploitation, ” according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

For Hailu, according to her slavery lawsuit, this entailed her receiving only 13 months’ pay for eight and a half years of work, being forced to work 15-hour days with no days off and no vacations, being beaten, regularly denied food, barred from contacting her family, having her passport confiscated and leaving her employer’s apartment independently only three times during her entire stay..

Unsurprisingly, Lebanon’s kafala system violates multiple international agreements to which the country is committed, including core obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and key ILO conventions. Lebanon also notably refused to ratify the 2014 Protocol to the Forced Labour Convention, which would have, among other things, committed it to adopting national strategies to prevent forced labor, protecting and rehabilitating victims, ensuring access to justice and remedies, strengthening legal enforcement, and upholding the principle of non-punishment for victims.

Slavery’s Profits: Why injustice endures

For all the injustice that slavery entails for its victims, it is also immensely profitable for its beneficiaries, helping to explain why the kafala system endures. As BADIL has previously reported, the industry that has been built up around importing domestic workers generates more than $100 million annually for recruitment agencies, insurance firms, the Ministry of Labor, General Security, and a host of other entities facilitating what effectively amounts to a human trafficking pipeline. Importantly, not included in this figure are the immense savings that hundreds of thousands of households and businesses reap from the cheap labor of domestic workers. These beneficiaries’ interests, collectively, have presented an as-yet insurmountable obstacle to dismantling the kafala system.

In September 2020, caretaker Labor Minister Lamia Yammine announced an overhaul of the kafala system. She had signed off on a new “Unified Contract,” drafted in collaboration with ILO and Human Rights Watch, that would grant migrant domestic workers a minimum wage, sick pay, rest days, protection against passport confiscation, the ability to terminate their own contracts, and other rights. The Syndicate of Owners of Worker Recruitment Agencies in Lebanon (SORAL) quickly organized, launching a lawsuit before the Shura Council, the country’s highest administrative court, claiming that the Ministry of Labor had overstepped its authority. The council then issued an order blocking implementation of the new contract.       

Acceptance of the kafala system persists at the societal level because it creates a dependence on the cheap outsourcing of domestic chores, with having a “maid” seen as a status symbol. Many families also hire domestic workers to care for their elderly, compensating for Lebanon’s weak social safety net. Bringing domestic workers under labor law and thereby mandating that they receive a minimum wage would make them immediately unaffordable for many Lebanese families, breaking this model. Compounding these factors is systemic and widespread racism in Lebanon that entrenches hierarchies of human worth based on nationality, normalizing exploitation.  

The migrant domestic workers who spoke to Badil said racism and discrimination were a regular feature of their existence in Lebanon, from humiliating household rules to outright social exclusion. In this sense, kafala extends beyond a legal regime, supporting a system of domination across socioeconomic and institutional spheres.  

Pushing against the worst excesses of the kafala system, NGOs and other advocacy groups have had modest successes. These include This is Lebanon’s campaign to name-and-shame abusive employers and KAFA’s training to help police identify domestic workers who have been victimized. An informal domestic workers’ union, founded in 2015 with ILO support, continues to mobilize despite being declared illegal by the labor minister at the time. However, “the total work by everyone is a drop in an ocean of what needs to be done,” according to Farah Salka, co-director of the Anti-Racism Movement in Lebanon.  

Promise and peril in seeking change through the courts 

While Lebanon has ratified several international conventions against slavery, including the 1926 Slavery Convention, its domestic law still lacks a formal definition of slavery. Article 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure gives international treaties precedence over national law, yet as legal scholar Ali Mourad tells BADIL, Lebanese judges “do not have the habit of referring to international conventions.” For this reason, Hailu’s slavery case is, potentially, legally groundbreaking.   

Since October 2020, Meseret Hailu’s case has been pending before an investigative judge in Lebanon. In July 2024, the judge closed the case because Hailu was unable to appear for a scheduled hearing. Her request to testify remotely, citing Lebanese legal precedent, was rejected, and an appeal against the closure was also denied. Under Lebanese procedure, when an investigative judge closes a case, it is sent to the public prosecutor, who reviews the file and issues a non-binding recommendation on whether to proceed with charges. In January 2025, coinciding with the formation of a new reformist government, the Mount Lebanon public prosecutor recommended that the case should not have been closed without hearing Hailu’s testimony and highlighted key evidentiary issues. After this recommendation, the investigative judge reopened the case in March 2025, which enabled Hailu to testify in May.  

Legal Action Worldwide is pursuing the case on Hailu’s behalf, and its legal advisor, Aaron Kearney, told BADIL that the goals are threefold: first, judicial recognition of a legal definition of slavery in Lebanon; second, acknowledgment that the kafala system constitutes slavery; and third, a precedent that elements of slavery can fall within the scope of the 2011 Trafficking in Persons Law. By framing her ordeal as a slavery case within the trafficking framework, advocates are strategically leveraging the law’s existing tools to challenge the absence of a domestic legal framework addressing systemic exploitation.  

Following Hailu’s testimony in May, a final hearing was held to address outstanding evidence. The investigation was then closed again and returned to the public prosecutor, who made another recommendation. While this recommendation has not yet been disclosed, Kearney remains optimistic. The investigative judge will then make the final decision on whether to issue an indictment, which could mark Lebanon’s first slavery trial. 

The case is also a test for Lebanon’s judiciary under the new reformist government, with several experts who spoke to BADIL saying their experience to date has shaken their faith in the judicial process. While Lebanese law theoretically upholds judicial independence, Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, notes that the practical reality often involves political interference, eroding the judiciary’s autonomy.  

Hailu’s case demonstrates that in the absence of legislative initiatives to deconstruct the kafala system, efforts to spur systemic change can still be launched through the courts. Doing so, however, requires removing the many structural barriers migrant domestic workers face in accessing the legal system. Many fear retaliation or deportation, particularly as their legal status in Lebanon depends on their employer. The restrictions on domestic workers’ movements and communications that many employers impose also inhibit them from seeking legal assistance. A lack of legal knowledge and language barriers further curtail autonomy, as most workers are unfamiliar with local laws or unable to navigate procedures in Arabic. The financial burden of lawyer fees is also prohibitive for most. The courts themselves present additional barriers: cases involving migrant domestic workers often take between two and four years to conclude, a timeline that most workers cannot financially sustain. For many, survival often takes precedence over justice, leaving the legal system functionally out of reach. 

Kafala is Slavery 

While the general aim of legislative efforts would be to codify the kafala system’s equation with slavery, fully dismantling the kafala system will require corrective actions across multiple branches of the Lebanese government. Most importantly, this includes amending the 1946 Labor Law to encompass domestic work, revising visa regulations under the General Security Directorate, and establishing effective Ministry of Labor oversight over contracts and recruitment practices. 

This legal inclusion would also help foster visibility and social recognition: by bringing workers under the labor law, they would be legitimized as participants in the economy. As Julia puts it, “So if I’m a worker and not included in the law, I’m nobody. Where is my name in this then?” Beyond legislation, to be effective reform must be accompanied by rigorous enforcement, regular workplace inspections, and independent monitoring. The Ministry of Labour would do well to also strengthen its supervision of recruitment agencies and implement an accreditation system to hold them accountable. 

So while efforts to challenge the status quo in Lebanon’s domestic worker industry have been blocked for decades, the reopening of Meseret Hailu’s case under the new reformist government demonstrates that meaningful change is possible. By allowing this landmark case to move forward, the courts have created a rare opportunity to confront entrenched interests and systemic abuses. All that remains now is for the judge to finally deduce the obvious: that kafala is slavery.  

Editor’s Note:
The name of the migrant domestic worker interviewed has been changed to protect their safety and privacy. Any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental.