Migrant Workers for Sale: Ongoing Trafficking Under the Guise of the Kafala System
By Joelle AbdelAal
In beauty salons, behind closed doors, and across digital platforms, a dehumanizing rhetoric persists, one that treats domestic workers not as people but as commodities. They are spoken of as items to be selected, swapped out, or discarded, often with less regard than a damaged appliance. Conversations about hiring migrant workers rarely center on skills or experience; instead, they reflect a kind of racialized marketplace logic. “Ethiopians are more energetic, but Kenyans are cleaner,” one might hear. “Sri Lankans are calmer, though they don’t understand Arabic.” Their wages are debated as though comparing price tags on a dining table or a decorative mirror.
Beneath these seemingly casual remarks lies a structure of systemic oppression, enforced through suspicion, surveillance, and stigma. “Keep an eye on her, don’t leave her home alone.” “She’s a thief, don’t show her any sympathy.” Such language reveals a deeply embedded logic of ownership: these women are not seen as workers, let alone human beings with rights. They are seen as property.
The sponsorship, or Kafala, system in Lebanon and across the Arab region enshrines this subjugation into law. It grants employers sweeping control over the lives of migrant domestic workers, in a relationship that mirrors servitude more than employment. In practice, it’s a system that strips women of autonomy, recasting them as the legal and social possessions of their sponsors.
Sharika Wa Laken has collected firsthand accounts from women workers who have endured the brutal realities of the Kafala system: beatings, food deprivation, sexual assault, withheld wages, denial of rest days, and in many cases, death, quietly recorded as “suicide.” These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a system that replicates slavery in a modern framework, where domestic work becomes a realm of unchecked abuse. With no meaningful legal protections, these crimes are routinely dismissed, relegated to footnotes in a society that refuses to admit that slavery is not a thing of the past. It lives next door, behind closed doors.
Recruitment Agencies: Gateways to Servitude and Sexual Abuse
Mary (a pseudonym) thought she was starting a new life when she left the Philippines for Lebanon at just 19 years old. Instead, what awaited her was a descent into exploitation and fear. She arrived through one of the many recruitment agencies that facilitate the arrival of foreign domestic workers, only to find herself trapped in a system where her body, freedom, and future were up for negotiation. Today, Mary hesitates to recount her story, not because she has forgotten, but because remembering still hurts. Her faint smile masks a trauma that never really left.
Mary’s ordeal began when her employer, who had falsely accused her of theft, returned her to the recruitment agency that had brought her to Lebanon. “She wanted to take me back after she found the item she claimed I stole,” Mary recalls. “But the agency owner refused. He kept me in his office. I don’t know why… I don’t remember everything, because it was a long time ago.”
After some time, the agency owner came back with another young woman, an African worker, and told Mary they were going somewhere. Isolated and unfamiliar with the country, she agreed to go. “I had just arrived in Lebanon. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know what was happening.”
“Both were naked, pressuring me to join them. I was terrified.”
They arrived at what she assumed would be a home. But she noticed something strange. “There was no kitchen. I asked, ‘What if I want to cook or eat?’ The girl told me this wasn’t a house, it was a hotel.” She pauses, searching for the words. “It might sound naïve, but I had never been to a hotel before in my life.” Her voice drops: “I didn’t understand what was going on.”
When she returned from the bathroom, Mary was confronted by the agency owner and the other girl, both naked, pressuring her to join them. “I was terrified. I locked myself in the bathroom. The girl kept knocking, trying to get me to come out. I just wanted to protect myself.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t even understand what they wanted. I just knew I was scared.”
When Mary refused, she tried to leave. The girl attempted to kiss her, saying, “Maybe you don’t like boys… maybe you like girls.” Mary replied quietly, “I’m not a lesbian.” Everything about the encounter felt surreal, alien, threatening, and deeply wrong.
After Mary pleaded with the agency owner to return her, she was transferred to another agency. “This time, the man didn’t touch me, but he kept saying things like ‘I’m like family… I could even be like your husband here, if you want something in Lebanon.’ It made me deeply uncomfortable. I think he was waiting to see if I would agree to something.” She suspects the first agency sent her away because “they didn’t get what they wanted from me.”
“I begged him, crying. I told him I couldn’t do this, I just wanted to work or to go back to my country.”
But the cycle of abuse continued. At the second agency, she narrowly escaped another sexual assault. “I begged him, crying. I told him I couldn’t do this, I just wanted to work or to go back to my country.” Her desperation eventually led her to a third agency, which finally placed her with a family. “That was my chance to escape the nightmare. I was lucky they treated me like a human being.”
“We are facing a powerful trafficking network.” “No one is held accountable, not even the embassies can protect us.”
Mary found strength through survival. Though the scars remain, she says she learned to protect herself. But her story, she insists, is not just about personal suffering, it is about a system. “What happened to me is part of something much bigger,” she says. “These agencies operate like open-air markets for human trafficking. Many of them sexually exploit girls or turn a blind eye to what happens to us.”
Mary, like many survivors, lives in fear of reopening these wounds publicly. “We are facing a powerful trafficking network,” she says. “No one is held accountable, not even the embassies can protect us.”
Contemporary Slavery, Zero Accountability
The testimony of Grace Wimbara, a 45-year-old Kenyan domestic worker, exposes the stark reality of Lebanon’s Kafala system: an exploitative structure built on coercion, with no meaningful legal safeguards for the workers it governs. Grace arrived in Lebanon hoping to earn a living as a domestic worker. Instead, she found herself trapped in conditions that bore a disturbing resemblance to slavery, forced to work long hours without proper food, denied three months’ wages, and then confronted with an outrageous ultimatum: “Work six more months for free, and we’ll let you go.”
” Nakhleh coerced them into touching his genitals and having sex with him under the threat of losing access to food.”
Grace recalls her growing fear of returning to the recruitment agency, whose owner, she says, was closely aligned with her employers. She describes his repeated mistreatment and persistent harassment. “He told me many times that he wanted to have sex with me,” she says.
Her story is not an outlier.
According to the watchdog organization This is Lebanon, multiple complaints have been filed against the agency “Gabriel Services,” operated by Gabriel Nakhleh. The allegations span a range of serious abuses committed against domestic workers of various nationalities, many of whom accuse Nakhleh of sexual assault and wage theft.
Several survivors have come forward with chilling accounts. One described being coerced into touching Nakhleh’s genitals under the threat of losing access to food. Others said he propositioned them outright, exchanging basic necessities for sex. One woman recounted a moment when he asked her to make tea in the kitchen. When she entered, he followed her in, closed the door, and forced her to touch him.
Grace only began to find safety after reaching out to a civil society organization, which helped her recover from a severe health crisis following months without medical care, especially dangerous given her chronic asthma. During a demonstration outside the Kenyan embassy to demand her return home, Grace learned from fellow workers that the agency she had feared, run by Gabriel and his wife, was operating illegally. Multiple women had been imprisoned and violently abused inside the office, with some even charged with crimes they did not commit.
Grace believes many recruitment agencies have built fortunes by exploiting women like her. “The Kafala system kills women,” she says bluntly. “It strips us of even the most basic rights.” A closer look into her claims revealed a disturbing reality: despite numerous allegations, Gabriel’s agency had no infractions listed in the Ministry of Labor’s records. Is this bureaucratic negligence, or institutional complicity?
“I Worked for a Famous Lebanese Artist, Without a Contract or a Salary”
Days after our first conversation, Grace returned with a story that added another troubling layer: abuse at the hands of a public figure. She explained that some employers, despite previous misconduct, continue to hire domestic workers by registering them under the names of friends or relatives, erasing any official trace of the employment in case of abuse or criminal conduct.
“He told me to get my wages from the agency,”
Grace says she worked for well-known Lebanese singer F.K., a celebrity whose media presence has not been free of controversy. “He was cruel. He didn’t pay me and caused me financial losses at the agency,” she recounts. Her name, she says, was not registered under F.K. himself, but under a friend, serving as a legal front. “He couldn’t sponsor a worker under his own name, so he used someone else.”
” I worked long hours in two homes, and when I began experiencing pain in my hands, they said I was faking it.”
She worked for F.K. and his mother from April 29 to June 11, 2021. She was never paid. “He told me to get my wages from the agency,” she says, then pauses. “It brings back bad memories.”
The mistreatment wasn’t limited to the artist. “His wife wouldn’t allow me to use the bathroom without permission. Even showering needed her approval. It was like being in prison.” Grace worked long hours in two homes, and when she began experiencing pain in her hands, they refused to take her to a doctor. “They said I was faking it.”
When asked why someone might be barred from legally employing a domestic worker, attorney Nkoula from Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) explains that while Lebanese law doesn’t explicitly ban individuals from hiring, the 2009 regulations governing migrant labor do impose conditions. “Employers must be Lebanese citizens with no criminal record,” she notes. “But violations, including the illegal dismissal of workers, failure to pay wages, or abuse, can also disqualify someone. That’s when people turn to friends to register the sponsorship under another name.”
State-Sanctioned Slavery, Shielded by Silence
Across Lebanon and much of the Arab world, the Kafala system remains a legalized structure of exploitation. It binds migrant workers to a single sponsor, granting near-total authority over the worker’s life, an arrangement that flagrantly violates international laws against forced labor and modern slavery.
Lawyer Mohana Ishaq, head of legal affairs at the anti-trafficking unit at KAFA, explains: “The Kafala system is not just a law. It’s a web of legal, social, and cultural practices that reduce domestic workers to property. They cannot change jobs or leave without their sponsor’s consent. Even their legal residence, documents, housing, and mobility are entirely tied to their employer.”
In this structure, workers become captives—not just of their employers, but of the system itself. Ishaq outlines the horrifying consequences: passport confiscation, restricted movement, endless working hours without rest or overtime pay, and denial of food or medical care. Physical and sexual violence are common. Justice is rare. Oversight mechanisms are ineffective. Political will is absent.
Even contract “terminations” take on a troubling form. They often happen through a notary’s “legal waiver”, a transactional process that closely resembles the transfer of property from one owner to another, with no input from the worker herself. In this context, the so-called “escape”, often the only way for women to flee abuse, is criminalized. Workers are slapped with fabricated theft charges or other accusations, trapping them in a legal nightmare that typically ends in deportation or death.
Meanwhile, tech platforms that claim to stand against trafficking continue to allow its visibility. Despite Meta’s 2023 pledge to fight human trafficking on its platforms, explicit ads and posts offering women for “sale” continue to circulate. Comments like “Price?” or “How much per month?” go unmoderated, evidence of the yawning gap between corporate pledges and actual practice.
A System That Breeds Violence
In Lebanon, the Kafala system continues to govern the relationship between employers and migrant domestic workers, often with devastating consequences. A 2022 study titled “A Glimpse into the Gender Dimensions of Sexual Violence Against Migrant Domestic Workers Post-Crisis” reveals alarming data: out of 913 surveyed women, 68% reported experiencing sexual harassment or assault during their employment. Even more distressing, 75% of these women were unable to report the abuse, not just out of fear, but because the system offers no effective protection or accountability.
The perpetrators of violence span a wide range: 70% were male employers, 65% taxi drivers, 40% family friends, 25–30% women employers, and even 15% were security personnel.
Against this grim backdrop, numerous deaths of migrant women continue to be dismissed as “suicides,” with no serious investigations. Such was the case with Ethiopian worker Emibet Bekele Pero in 2014 and Ghanaian worker Faustina Tai in 2020, who had documented her abuse before her death. These cases are routinely closed with a single word: “suicide,” all while the state remains silent.
Lawyer Ghada Nkoula from Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) confirms: “Investigations into deaths of domestic workers, whether labeled suicide or suspected murder, are rarely pursued with the rigor they deserve. No recruitment agency has ever been shut down, despite overwhelming evidence of abuse. These agencies are shielded by the Kafala system itself.”
Farah Abdallah, a lawyer with the National Federation of Workers and Employees in Lebanon, calls these agencies “human traffickers” that thrive on weak oversight and opaque recruitment processes. She urges a structural shift: transferring responsibility for recruitment to the National Employment Office, which would allow for real regulatory oversight and uphold workers’ rights.
War, Crisis, and the Collapse of Protection: The Kafala System Tightens Its Grip
As Lebanon reels from economic collapse, war, and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, conditions for migrant domestic workers have only worsened. Farah Abdallah explains that the most common violations under Kafala today include “deprivation of liberty, confiscation of identity documents, and refusal to transfer sponsorship unless workers pay exorbitant fees.”
During lockdowns and crises, many workers were abandoned by employers, left without food, protection, or recourse. Humanitarian support, when offered, came in the form of food boxes and blankets, aid that failed to address the deeper, structural violence embedded in the system.
In 2020, Lebanon’s government proposed a standardized labor contract for domestic workers. But the Employers’ Union quickly rejected it, arguing that the sponsorship model was “necessary.” In Abdallah’s words, the Kafala system is “a modern form of slavery,” and its greatest beneficiaries are recruitment agencies.
Today, approximately 250,000 migrant domestic workers live in Lebanon, primarily from Ethiopia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. They are excluded from Lebanese labor law and denied basic protections, such as the right to a minimum wage or a weekly day off. Amnesty International has condemned the system, while Human Rights Watch describes it as “enabling exploitation.” The International Labour Organization identifies it as one of the most widespread forms of forced labor in the Arab world, providing legal cover for systemic abuse.
While some migrant workers have taken their abusers to court, and a few have even won, these legal battles are long and exhausting. Without proper financial and legal aid, many women are forced to abandon their cases and leave the country, their trauma unresolved and their rights denied.
Will the M.H. Case Bring Down the Kafala System in Lebanon?
At the heart of this entrenched system of servitude, the case of Mirzet Haylo, known publicly as M.H., has emerged as a rare and potentially precedent-setting legal challenge to the Kafala system in Lebanon.
Filed on October 8, 2020, by attorney Ghada Nkoula, the lawsuit accuses both the employer and the recruitment agency of subjecting Mirzet, an Ethiopian domestic worker, to conditions amounting to modern slavery between 2011 and 2019. According to Nkoula, this is the first time a criminal court in Lebanon has been asked to consider the Kafala framework itself as a form of slavery under criminal law.
A key hearing took place on May 27, 2025. For the first time, Mirzet directly confronted her former sponsor before the investigating judge, who is now reviewing the evidence and testimonies to decide whether to refer the case to trial.
“If these charges are upheld,” Nkoula says, “it won’t just bring justice to Mirzet. It could open the door to prosecuting the Kafala system for what it truly is: a vehicle for slavery and human trafficking.”
Such crimes, she adds, fall under jus cogens, peremptory norms of international law that cannot be justified or ignored under any circumstances, alongside crimes like torture and genocide. The case also holds the Lebanese state accountable under its international obligations to prevent and prosecute these violations.
While the verdict is still pending, the legal and political impact is already being felt. The case has forced public debate, raised legal scrutiny, and reignited urgent calls to recognize the Kafala system as a form of modern slavery in dire need of abolition.
The Kafala System: A Modern Form of Slavery
The Kafala system has deep historical roots, echoing the structures of 19th-century slavery, when workers were treated as the property of their employers, stripped of legal protections and personal autonomy. Today, despite decades of progress in international labor standards, the Kafala system remains in place across several countries, most notably Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Under this system, a migrant worker’s legal residency is tied to their employer (or sponsor), effectively barring them from changing jobs, leaving abusive workplaces, or even exiting the country without permission. This practice directly violates Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of movement.
In Lebanon, despite repeated warnings from organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the International Labour Organization (ILO), the sponsor continues to wield unchecked power. The absence of clear legislation leaves workers exposed to arbitrary control, forced isolation, and systematic abuse, all under the veneer of legality.
In the Gulf, governments have occasionally introduced reform measures, such as replacing Kafala with employment contracts or adopting “flexible permit” schemes, as in Bahrain. Yet most of these reforms have remained largely symbolic or unimplemented, hindered by a lack of political will and enforcement mechanisms.
Elsewhere, systems that resemble Kafala also persist. In the United States, for example, cases of modern slavery have surfaced among migrant agricultural and domestic workers from Latin America and South Asia. These workers, though not formally under a sponsorship system, endure comparable conditions under exploitative visa programs like the H-2B. The UN Human Rights Office has urged the U.S. to reform such programs to ensure workers’ freedom and mobility.
What ties these global systems together is the commodification of the worker’s body, where productivity is prioritized over rights, and legal structures often serve to protect the employers rather than the workers. Across borders, the result is the same: systems that enable forced labor, silence survivors, and offer impunity to abusers.
Dismantling the Kafala System: From Reform to Abolition
The ILO has made its position clear: the Kafala system should not be modified; it must be abolished. The organization argues that the system’s very structure involves elements of coercion that constitute forced labor. Likewise, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has called for women migrant domestic workers to be fully integrated into national labor laws and for the creation of independent, safe complaint mechanisms.
Human Rights Watch warns that keeping the sponsorship model intact offers a legal pretext for repeated violations: wage theft, sexual violence, forced confinement, and even death. Yet despite these calls for action, many governments continue to justify Kafala with appeals to “sovereignty,” “cultural traditions,” or “labor market stability”, as if human dignity were negotiable.
In Lebanon, the exploitation persists unabated. Despite countless reports of abuse, the Kafala system remains absent from government policy discussions, including the most recent ministerial statement. This silence signals the state’s unwillingness to enact the necessary legal reforms, allowing recruitment agencies and brokers to continue operating with impunity.
Lawyer Farah Abdallah underscores the role of the National Federation of Trade Unions in Lebanon, which works on two critical fronts: “First, by building partnerships with unions in labor-exporting countries to raise awareness before women arrive. And second, by providing direct support on the ground.” These efforts, she notes, have had a tangible impact, but structural change requires more.
Lawyer Mohana Ishaq echoes this call for reform, stressing that Lebanon’s refusal to ratify ILO Convention No. 189 on domestic workers does not exempt it from its broader human rights obligations. She insists on the urgent need to bring domestic workers under the protection of national labor law and to create robust monitoring and enforcement systems.
In the face of mounting evidence and decades of advocacy, one truth remains clear: unless the Kafala system is dismantled at its core and replaced with rights-based labor legislation, the bodies and lives of migrant workers will continue to serve as collateral in a system built on exploitation.
