Farfahinne

A documentary by Carol Mansour
This second documentary film targets the Lebanese public to generate a debate on the role that women migrant domestic workers play in Lebanese households. The film poses questions and suggests answers on workers' rights, employment contracts and everyday terms and conditions of work. This documentary picks up from where the first Maid in Lebanon left off, showcasing four stories of Lebanese employers and their 'maids'.

Place:
Babel Theater, Thursday, 29 May 2008, 8:00 pm
Marinian Center, next to AUB hospital
Hamra, Beirut (01) 744-033/4

i am glad to see that the unjust and even inhuman conditions of women migrant domestic workers in Lebanon (200 thousand W.M.D.W in Lebanon) started to catch the attention of local and international media. these women are deprived from their very basic rights: to keep their passports, to go out, to have limited work hours...many are tortured, beaten, and locked in the house. the W.M.D.W replace the mum, the cooker, the babysitter, the washer, the teacher, and don't have a specific job, simply they are over-worked: they do everything and they are and have nothing at the same time. They have no rights, they are a second category of human beings , they are not suppose to have breaks, to have social life, to enjoy privacy....they are 24/24 working: no question that many of them end up by killing themselves (look to the picture bellow) or their "owners". after many reported incidents of "Maid's" suicide, that the Lebanese authorities tried to hide, finally their conditions attracted the attention of the media. over the last year many articles and documentaries discussed their situation and as long as i know, a new law will soon be issued to regulate their work and to give them their rights. till then, 200.000 W.M.D.W are still deprived their basic rights and many things should be done to push the Lebanese authority to issue such a law.

click on the picture bellow to read an article in Arabic about the working conditions of women migrant domestic workers in Lebanon

Sushar Rosky, born 1987, hangs from the balcony of the apartment in which she worked as a maid for only 20 days in Sidon, Lebanon. She hung herself with bits of clothe carefully tied together in 2005. No investigation was conducted into the circumstances leading up to her death.In the first three months of 2007 alone, at least four more domestic migrant workers in Lebanon have been driven to commit suicide.

As`ad AbuKhalil wrote an unforgiving elegy for Sushar Rosky at the time of her death: “Don’t expect the US State Department to comment on her death, the freedom loving president of yours will not call for an investigation, and Kofi Annan… will not call for a special meeting of the security council. This foreign domestic worker was not a billionaire, and her death will go unnoticed…. The Nation magazine… will not publish special tributes to her. No western government will express alarm about her plight. This will be a death that will be added to the many deaths that go on regularly in Lebanon without any fanfare or press releases: these are the deaths of people that have no lobbies behind them, and no powerful government…. Arab satellite stations will not send a team to interview her family in Sri Lanka, and no Lebanese newspaper will send a team to investigate the circumstances behind her death.”

and here comes the ultimate..., donno what to call it, hypocrisy?!
this picture was taken during the US backed "cedar revolution" that reclaimed "freedom" "independence" and "sovereignty"! and here is one of the demonstrators, a Lebanese “freedom” demonstrator, who brought her maid along with her and asked her to hold the Lebanese flag– a flag which has done little to protect her rights.