In December 2020, the Lebanese Parliament passed the landmark Law 205 against sexual harassment that could see perpetrators spend up to four years in prison and pay fines up to fifty times the minimum wage. The law additionally affords protection to both the victims and any witnesses who testify against the accused. While the law was applauded as a step forward for sexual harassment victims, it excludes an important faction of the community – migrant domestic workers. The law falls short of international standards by addressing sexual harassment solely as a crime and neglecting to complement this law with labor law reforms, monitoring, and civil remedies. This research focuses on the various forms of sexual violence either protected or enabled under the Kafala system. It aims to depict the incessant violations this type of system has produced. This large-scale research with interviews of almost a thousand migrant domestic workers in Lebanon serves as an unprecedented, direct look into the intimate experiences of these women, and serves as an output that demystifies sexual harassment both inside and outside professional settings.
This case study is one of a series of case studies to supplement the global campaign report, Ripe for Change, drawing attention to the plight of specific groups of small-scale farmers or workers in international food value chains and/or promoting su...Read More
This Modern Slavery PEC Policy Brief is the third in a series of Policy Briefs that assess the evidence base on the effectiveness of different regulatory interventions to address modern slavery in global supply chains, a key research priority for th...Read More
Over the past decade, third-party labor recruiters who facilitate employment for migrant workers across low- and middle-income countries have often been considered by the counter-trafficking community as one of the main entry points into human traff...Read More
This Research Brief analyses possible scenarios of how smuggling of migrants and cross-border trafficking in persons are likely to be affected by the COVID-19 crisis along mixed migration routes to two important destination regions: North America an...Read More
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