 Hello everybody, this is Femme Ok, host of the stream, really good to see you. I am just putting in what our conversation is about today. We're talking about domestic workers and domestic workers not just anywhere but domestic workers who are in Lebanon. And there is a system around the Middle East known as the kafala system. It is a sponsorship system which allows workers to come and work in the homes of different families around the Middle East. This system has long been criticised as being modern day slavery. That is when the employers abuse the system. So we are talking about a perfect storm today. The perfect storm is an economic crisis in Lebanon, a political crisis in Lebanon. And then the Beirut blast in Lebanon all having an impact on how much people can actually pay their migrant domestic workers if they can continue to look after their domestic migrant workers and then what that actually does down on the ground. We're talking about real people who are vulnerable from different parts of the world. A lot of the migrant workers though come from East Africa, Ethiopia in particular. You will hear about that. How much agency do they have who is working on their behalf? We are going to be joined today by the IOM or UN migration. And they are going to be talking about their work on what they think our priority should be as an international community. So let me tell you if you have a take on this story, if you have questions on this story, one place for you to go. The bottom of the screen you see right down there is a little box with a question mark. If you have questions or comments put them in there because it makes it so much easier for me to see you. Hello Ramya. One, one, one, one. Hi. Nice to see you. Thank you for joining our international conversation. Hello to Fadin Shaker 3107. Thank you very much for spending part of your Sunday with us on our Instagram live chat on the stream. Just looking out here for UN migration. Going to pull them into the conversation. We are going to be joined by Dima Haddad. She is a pro of the IOM. She is based in Beirut, Lebanon. I'm really looking forward to digging deeper into this topic. Dima, hello. Welcome. Good to see you. Hi, Femi. And I really love your motivation. I feel like you believe in the code. I'm waiting. Oh, I do. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Yeah. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Yeah. And it's true. I know what you love about this is the IOM. And she is based in Beirut, Lebanon. I'm really looking forward to digging deeper into this topic. Dima, hello. Welcome. Good to see you. Hi, Femi. And I really love your motivation. I feel like you believe in the code. I'm waiting. Oh, I do. I'm waiting. Yeah. I know what you love about this Instagram Live is that we get to talk to people who are on Instagram who have questions and they can just go ahead, ask those questions to you. So, Instagram Live is welcome. I'm Femi OK. House of the Stream. And this is Dima, her dad, Dima. Do your four titles. I want people to be suitably impressed as they should be by your title. Go ahead, Dima. Thank you. Actually, I'm in charge of the regional program that focuses on really counter-traffic trafficking. Trafficking is a crime that really hits human being and at the heart, I have to say. We're exploiting them as the main objective of this crime. Dima, on the stream earlier on today, we had a YouTube discussion. We were talking about migrant domestic workers being trapped in Lebanon. And I know one of the things that you want to talk about was how vulnerable they are right now, but also have been for many years. Where should we start? Where do you want to start? I think it would be good to share with our audience a bit of context. Like, even before coming to Lebanon, what are these people experiencing? And what is really pushing them to migrate to come? And definitely from our experience and the cases that we have been dealing with, one of the main issues that they are looking for is to ensure better economic opportunities for them and for their families. And for some of them as well, actually, to look for education. So, unfortunately, some of them are simply pushed because they want to escape early marriage or domestic violence. And in order for them really to be able to afford the migration fears, they may resort to debt. So all this is happening before them coming. What does it mean? It means in practice that they are really not choosing to come as a, that choosing migration as an option, they are being forced to. So practically, sometimes we are seeing cases where they are being, they are giving promises in terms of like type of jobs that they are performing or the benefits that they will get in terms of salaries, times off and so on. Unfortunately upon their arrival to Lebanon, these people are being deceived because they do not expect really and always really what has been promised to them prior to their migration. So usually they accept these opportunities because they are given great image of what is waiting for them. But in fact, unfortunately, it's not always the truth because let's say we've seen that cases that they have, they were expecting to come to work at a hotel or a restaurant, but then they find themselves working in a house where they don't have the right to move out of the house or they don't even have their passport on where they are being asked to work for long working hours or they are asked to stay on standby for 24 hours, seven days a week. So again, all these situations as you said, they are already prior to whatever even before speaking about economic, COVID or the blast, they were already there. So again, I mean... Is this human trafficking disguised as a migration, migrant system, a system of employment? Are we really looking at human trafficking? Definitely, I mean, traffickers are taking advantage from the vulnerable people that they are looking for better opportunities and they are the one who are very well-organized as networks to go and recruit these people from their home countries and then from home villages to bring them into something that they don't know what exactly it is. But they are the one who are already having out of this business and we've seen how sometimes when some countries imposes bans on movement and restriction on migration, how traffickers may switch their attention to neighboring countries or they may change the migration route. And I take the example of the Ethiopian per se and how let's say when there was a ban from the Ethiopian government, the network of recruiters and the network of smugglers and traffickers were mainly bringing them to Sudan and then from Sudan to Lebanon which is putting them again at risk of abusers, violence, exploitation. So yes, I echo what you are saying. Hello everybody, this is Instagram Live with AJ Stream and UM Migration. We are talking specifically about domestic workers who are migrants trapped in Lebanon and what to be done about that. Dima, the what to be done part, what are you doing? Hello colleagues. I have to very quickly to link it again, like this situation has exacerbated because of the economic crisis, because of the COVID-19 and because of the blast. And we've seen that actually it will be good for our followers to know that we have done an assessment. It was really a rapid assessment to assess the needs of this population. And one of really the key finding was that 70% of these people were with no source of income. And I have to say that 60% of them, they were basically without their passport and at the same time 50% of them were not able to pay their rent. And they were resulting, almost 35% of them were resorting to debt in order to be able to cope with the situation. And listen to me here. 62% have really inadequate food consumption. So what does that mean in practice? It means that these people have really the need to have safe accommodation. They really need access to food. And we will see that how COVID also really made us realize that the health care is also and needs to be given to this particular group who's really very much vulnerable. So again, the findings of this assessment was give us a strong indicators on where we should be focusing our response as a humanitarian response. Because I've also seen and you had an amazing show earlier. It was really about we've seen that these people are suffering. They are sleeping on the street. They don't have really food. So our attention was really to make sure that these people are included in the humanitarian response to be able to give them these direct assistance. So now we are at the stage really looking together with our UN sisters and NGO partners and the community structures in order really to make sure that this particular vulnerable group is receiving the direct assistance as I have said. But in parallel, what do we need also to think of? We need to make sure that these people who are vulnerable and they have special needs that we are properly identifying them. So why do we identify them? Because we want to offer them particular care and assistance. So at this stage, we are really trying to establish the structure. Unfortunately, the structure doesn't exist before. And we're now coming all together to be able really to put it in place. Dima, what does that mean? Because we're talking about, I want to bring this in. This is Christine Patrick. Christine says, and she's talking about domestic migrant workers sucking Lebanon right now. She says she talks about their education. And if they have a high education level, she says that they're very humble. And so that's why they got themselves into such a fix in the first place. So when you're talking about changing structures, what does that mean to somebody who came from Ethiopia to Beirut or came from northern Nigeria to Beirut? What does that actually mean to them, to the migrant workers? Yeah. No, actually, and thank you for Christina, because she raised this issue. We've seen that a lot of our group of migrants being assisted that they have quite a high level of education. And some of them, unfortunately, they were also promised to continue their education in Lebanon. So they were promised to have a part-time job and in parallel to be able to continue their education. Because as we said earlier, they really want to improve and have a better life, which is the right of everyone, right? But unfortunately, they are trapped, as you said, into false promises. And we really need to make sure that we are identifying them. And we really need to listen to them and engage them in the process where they can decide what do they want to do. Again, because in the trafficking process, unfortunately, these people, their decision is taken. They have no more the ability to decide. Someone else is deciding on that place. So I would say, first of all, is we need to bring back the decision-making process for these minors themselves, because they're no better than anyone else. What do they want, right? So their role is here only to support them in their plan. So the priority really is to walk them through this process and tell them that, again, hey, life will not stop here. It's only a hopefully contemporary experience that we are here standing by your side to overcome it. But you guys have a lot of power. And I have to say here, Femi, because we're thinking about power. I mean, we've seen the experience lately in Lebanon. You've got rolling blackouts. I'm hoping that they won't be wondering this Instagram live. We're talking about power. We've seen really the sentiment of solidarity that was there among the community members. It is really amazing where no one yet, even UN, even NGOs, no one was yet there to support. They were there. And this was really a strong message to everyone that they have a lot of power and we really need to engage them in whatever we are seeking of and now and in the future. So there's emphasis between blackouts, but it was something very important to highlight. All right, so this is very important. This is a conversation with AJ Stream and IOM, also known as at UN Migration. Thank you for joining us. And this conversation, Jeannie X-Dew says, will this be recorded? Absolutely. You will find it on the AJ Stream Instagram account under IGTV. You will find it there. Femi OK from the stream, Dima Haddad from IOM. And Dima, I think this is really important because we've been talking about the domestic migrant workers, we haven't seen their pictures. And I know this week, Muse Mohamed has been taking some spectacular pictures of the women themselves, these amazing portraits which show power and fortitude. I'm going to show some of them here. Do you know the actual ladies themselves? Have you worked with them? Yeah, these were some of the people that were under our care. And definitely, I mean, as I said, I mean, what is more important is for these people not to feel alone, honestly. And again, what is also important to highlight Femi here is that our support will not stop here in Lebanon. The support will be extended even until they come back to their camps of origin and we work them through a process of reintegration. Why I'm saying that? Because as we started at the beginning, we explained that these people have experiences prior to reintegration. And we want to make sure that upon their return that they are properly supported and assisted in order to start their life again. Otherwise, they will be at ease. So again, I mean, unfortunately, to give them wrong hopes and they are sure and we've seen that they will be very open to take any opportunity given or often by these traffickers if they do not feel that they are able to adapt and just start again in their own account. Yeah, Dima, I'm just going to check because I know that you've got a team with you, a little team with you. I don't hear Dima as well. She sounds a little like Timmy or Echoey. If you've done anything to the sound of something, if headphones come poured out or something like that, back room team, if you can fix that, that would be great because Dima now sounds like she's inhaling some weird gas and she sounds like a little Minnie Mouse. We can fix her voice. That would be wonderful. That's possible. Let's see. F-O-G-B-0-0-1. Thank you for your question. I really love this. What roles are embassies which are meant to represent these migrants playing in this situation? How are the embassies helping or are they hindering? Yeah. No, I think for me it's important here to make the distinction because we have embassies that have and we have a different type of an inconsolate and I think that I believe that again it would be cool for on government, each country where the muggers are residing in, especially in big numbers. So because it will make a lot of difference here, what is really to register their citizens and whenever they are in need of to confirm identity and to issue travel documents this is something that is very important especially that we've seen that some passports are being confiscated or some papers are not existing. So these people will not really be able to access healthcare if it's not really if they are not really identified. So the documentation this is an important role that the embassies needs to play. Some of them are playing this in a very active way and this is great and we want to encourage all the embassies to do so. This is one. Second I mean for us also the embassies are frontliners so they may receive requests for assistance from their citizens so they really need to be present there to listen to them. And we have in the pipeline also training frontline actors for the people who are in first contact with migrants to know their vulnerabilities in order to be aware. Are you able to better hear me now? No. Unfortunately I can't so I'm going to make this very quick demo and wrap it up because people have been very patient and staying with us I really appreciate you saying on the Instagram live it's such an important topic we're talking about domestic migrant workers in Lebanon some of them are actually trapped we're talking to Dima Haddad Dima is just here Program Officer at IOM and we started off so well we had perfect audio and now we have terrible audio but I'm just going to squeeze in some quick questions Dima if you can do quick responses that would be great and then we can just wrap it all up and of course I said you can't hear a thing so do you know what I'm going to do? I am just going to say Dima thank you so much I'm going to wrap up this conversation because the audio is so bad that people aren't hearing it but I know that they're going to follow you on the UM Migration on Twitter and on Instagram and they can watch the larger conversation at stream.absirah.com where we talk about migrant workers who are trapped in Lebanon Dima in a sentence what is the most important thing that we can be doing right now as an international community seeing that there is a major issue with the Kfarla system and domestic workers what do we need to do? I mean we believe as IOM that no one should be left behind in this current situation against specifically migrant workers because they have been contributing a lot to the economy of Lebanon but also to the economy of their counties of origin so I think Nelly this is a call for everyone for international community for donors for counties of origin and government of Lebanon Nelly that this particular group needs to be given attention now in terms of providing them with dieting and urgent in terms of food safe accommodation and healthcare but on the long run really to make sure that we have systems in place that are productive for the vulnerable people and how to do that we're here to open up dialogues build a partnership and take things forward this is I think the main message that I would like to thank you for being here Dima thank you so much I am so sorry that the audio is not cooperating you look amazing I hear your points but it is really difficult for our audience to hear so I'm going to wrap us up now and do watch the whole Instagram Live you can see it at AJStream's Instagram site and of course keep following U.M. migration on Twitter and also on Instagram as well Dima Haddad Instagram Live from around the world thank you so much for your time today really appreciate it take care everybody see you next time bye bye the IO and she is based in Beirut in Lebanon I'm really looking forward to digging deeper into this topic Dima hello welcome good to see you hi Femi and I really love your motivation I feel like you've been even the co-worker oh I do I absolutely do yeah and you know what's lovely about this Instagram Live is that we get to talk to people who are on Instagram who have questions and they can just go ahead ask those questions to you so Instagram Live is welcome I'm Femi Ok host of the stream and this is Dima Haddad Dima do your full title because I want people to be suitably impressed as they should be by your title go ahead Dima thank you actually I'm in charge of the regional program that focuses on really counter trafficking trafficking is a crime that really hits human being and at the heart I have to say we're exploiting them it's the main objective of this crime Dima on the stream earlier on today we had a YouTube discussion we were talking about migrant domestic workers being trapped in Lebanon and I know one of the things that you want to talk about was how vulnerable they are right now but also have been for many years where should we start where do you want to start I think it would be good to share with our audience a bit of context like even before coming to Lebanon what are these people experiencing and what is really pushing them to migrate to come and definitely from our experience and the cases that we have been dealing with one of the main issues that they are looking for is to ensure better economic opportunities for them and for their families and for some of them as well actually to look for education so unfortunately some of them are simply pushed because they want to escape early marriage or domestic violence and in order for them really to be able to afford the migration fears they may resort to debt so all this is happening before them coming what does it mean it means in practice that they are really not choosing to come not choosing migration as an option they are being forced to so practically sometimes we are seeing cases where they are being they are giving promises in terms of like type of jobs that they are performing or the benefits that they will get in terms of salaries, times of and so on unfortunately upon their arrival to Lebanon these people are being deceived because they do not expect really and always really what has been promised to them prior to their migration so usually they accept these opportunities because they are given great image of what is waiting for them but in fact unfortunately it's not always the truth because let's say we've seen that cases let's say have they were expecting to come to work in a hotel or a restaurant but then they find themselves working in a house where they don't have the right to move out of the house or they don't even have their passport on where they are being asked to work for long working hours or they are asked to stay on standby for 24 hours, 7 days a week so again all these situations as you said they are already prior to whatever even before speaking about economic COVID or the blast they were already there so again Is this human trafficking disguised as a migration migrant system of employment? Are we really looking at human trafficking? Definitely traffickers are taking advantage from the vulnerable people that they are looking for better opportunities and they are the one who are very well organized as networks to go and recruit these people from their home counties and then from home villages to bring them into something that they don't know what exactly it is but they are the one who are already having out of this business and we see in how sometimes when some countries impose bans on movement and restriction on migration how traffickers may switch their attention to neighboring countries or they may change the migration route and I take the example of the Ethiopian per se and how let's say when there was a ban from the Ethiopian government the network of recruiters and the network of smugglers and traffickers were mainly bringing them to Sudan and then from Sudan to Lebanon which is putting them again at risk of abusers violence exploitation so yes I echo what you are saying Hello everybody this is Instagram Live with AJ stream and we are talking specifically about domestic workers who are migrants trapped in Lebanon and what to be done about that Dima the what to be done part what are you doing with your colleagues today I have to very quickly to link it again this situation has been exacerbated because of the economic prices because of the COVID-19 and because of the blast and we've seen that actually it will be good for our followers to know that we have done an assessment it was really a rapid assessment to assess the needs of this population and one of the really the key finding was that 70% of these people were with no source of income and I have to say that 60% of them they were basically without their passport and at the same time 50% of them were not able to pay their rent so this and they were resulting I have almost 35% of them were resulting to that in order to be able to cope with the situation and listen to me here 62% have really inadequate food consumption so what does that mean in practice it means that these people have really the need to have safe accommodation they really need access to food and we will see that how COVID also really made us realize that the health care is also and needs to be given to this particular group who's really very much vulnerable so again the findings of this assessment was give us a strong indicators on where we should be really focusing our response as a humanitarian response because I've also seen and you had an amazing show earlier it was really about we've seen that these people are suffering they are sleeping on the street they don't have really food so our attention was really to make sure that these people are included in the humanitarian response to be able to give them these direct assistance so now we are at the stage really looking together with our UN sisters and NGO partners and the community structures in order really to make sure that this particular vulnerable group is receiving the direct assistance as I have said but in parallel what do we need also to think of we need to make sure that these people who are vulnerable and they have special needs that we are properly identifying them so why do we identify them because we want to offer them particular care and assistance so at this stage we are really trying to establish the structure unfortunately the structure didn't exist before and we are now coming all together to be able really to put it in place Dima what does that mean because we're talking about I want to bring this in this is Christine Patrick Christine says she's talking about domestic migrant workers sucking Lebanon right now she says she talks about their education and if we have a high education level she says that they're very humble so that's why they got themselves into such a fix in the first place so when you're talking about changing structures what does that mean to somebody who came from Ethiopia to Beirut or came from northern Nigeria to Beirut what does that actually mean to them to the actual workers actually and thank you for Christine because she raised this issue we've seen that a lot of our group of migrants being assisted that they have quite a high level of education and some of them unfortunately they were also promised to continue their education in Lebanon so they were promised to have a part-time job and in parallel to be able really to continue their education because as we said earlier they really want to improve and have a better life which is the right of everyone right but unfortunately they are trapped as you said into false promises and we really need to make sure that we are identifying them and we really need to listen to them and engage them in the process where they can decide what do they want to do again because in the trafficking process unfortunately these people their decision is taken they have no more the ability to decide someone else is deciding on that place so I would say first of all is we need to bring back the decision-making process for these migrants themselves because they are no better than anyone else what do they want our role is here only to support them in their plan so the priority really is to walk them through this process and tell them that again hey life will not stop here it's only an contemporary experience that we are here standing by your side to overcome it but you guys have a lot of power and I have to say here because we're speaking about power we've seen the experience lately in Lebanon you keep rolling back out I'm hoping that there won't be one during this Instagram live we're talking about power we've seen really the the sentiment of solidarity that was there among the community members it is really amazing where no one yet UN even NGOs no one was yet there to support they were there and this was really a strong message to everyone that they have a lot of power and we really need to engage them in whatever we are seeking of in the future between the brackets but it was something really important to highlight alright so this is very important this is a conversation with AJ stream and IOM also known as at UN migration thank you for joining us and this conversation Jeanie X do says will this be recorded absolutely you will find it on the AJ stream Instagram account under IGTV you will find it there from the stream and Dima I think this is really important because we've been talking about the domestic migrant workers but we haven't seen their pictures and I know this week Muse Mohammed has been taking some spectacular pictures of the women themselves these amazing portraits which show power and fortitude I'm going to show some of them here do you know the actual ladies themselves have you worked with them yeah these were some of the people that were under our care and definitely I mean as I said what is really important is for these people not to feel alone honestly and again that what is what is also important to highlight for me here is that our support will not stop here in Lebanon the support will be extended even until they come back to their campus of origin and we work them through a process of re-integration why I'm saying that because as we started at the beginning we explained that these people have experiences prior to integration and we want to make sure that upon their return that they are properly supported and assisted in order to start their life again otherwise they will be at ease so again by Andrea I mean I approach them to address their unfortunately to give them wrong hopes and they are sure and we've seen that they will be very open to take any opportunity given or often by these developers if they do not feel that they are able to adapt and start again in their hometown I'm just going to check because I know that you've got a team with you I don't hear Dima as well she sounds a little like Timmy or Echoey if you've done anything to the sound if a headphones come poured out or something like that back room team if you can fix that that would be great because Dima now sounds like she's inhaling some weird gas we can fix her voice that would be wonderful if that's possible let's see FOTB 001 thank you for your question I really love this what roles are embassies which are meant to represent these migrants playing in this situation how are the embassies helping or are they hindering Dima I think for me it's important here to make the distinction because we have embassies and we have a different type of consulate and I think I believe that again it will be called on government each county where their migrants are residing and especially in big numbers so because it will make a lot of difference here what is clearly to register their citizens and whenever they are in need of to confirm identity and to issue travel documents this is something that is very important because especially that we have seen that some passports are being confiscated or some papers are not existing so these people will not really be able to access healthcare if it's not really if they are not really identified documentation this is an important role that the embassies needs to play some of them are playing this in a very active way and we want to encourage all the embassies to do so second I mean for us also the embassies are frontliners so they may receive requests for assistance from their citizens so they really need to be present there to listen to them and we have in the pipeline also training frontline actors for the people who are in first contact with migrants to know their vulnerabilities in order to be moving forward are you able to better hear me now no unfortunately I can't so I'm going to make this very quick demon wrap it up because people have been very patient and staying with us I really appreciate you staying on the Instagram live it's such an important topic we're talking about domestic migrant workers in Lebanon some of them are actually trapped we're talking to Dima Haddad Dima is just here program officer at IOM and we started off so well we had perfect audio and now we have terrible audio but I'm just going to squeeze in quick questions Dima and if you can do quick responses that would be great and then we could just wrap it all up and of course I said you can't hear a thing so do you know what I'm there to do I am just going to say Dima thank you so much I'm going to wrap up this conversation because the audio is so bad that people aren't hearing it but I know that they're going to follow you on the UN Migration on Twitter and on Instagram