Mutual aid is being organized for displaced migrant workers. Here, Sierra Leonean workers have found refuge with their compatriots in Burj Hammoud. (Credit: Anne-Marie el-Hage/L'Orient-Le Jour)
"My employer's house in Nabatieh was bombed. She fled, leaving me without a job, money, food, or papers." Rose is only 23 years old. She had been working as a domestic helper for a year and a half in this city in southern Lebanon, living with her employers, when fighting between Hezbollah and Israel resumed in early March. The new war upended her life and those of many migrant domestic workers, as the United Nations reports more than a million internally displaced people, or 20% of the population. To escape herself, she had to manage to find a taxi to Beirut.The tiny, run-down two-room apartment in Burj Hammoud, in the eastern suburbs of Beirut, which serves as a home for Maureen, a Kenyan hairdresser, and four of her compatriots, now hosts seven displaced workers from Nabatieh, including Rose. "We all have basically...
"My employer's house in Nabatieh was bombed. She fled, leaving me without a job, money, food, or papers." Rose is only 23 years old. She had been working as a domestic helper for a year and a half in this city in southern Lebanon, living with her employers, when fighting between Hezbollah and Israel resumed in early March. The new war upended her life and those of many migrant domestic workers, as the United Nations reports more than a million internally displaced people, or 20% of the population. To escape herself, she had to manage to find a taxi to Beirut.The tiny, run-down two-room apartment in Burj Hammoud, in the eastern suburbs of Beirut, which serves as a home for Maureen, a Kenyan hairdresser, and four of her compatriots, now hosts seven displaced workers from Nabatieh, including Rose. "We all have basically...
