Asia debates more rights for domestic workers

The Lebanese justice system woefully fails to protect the country's large number of migrant domestic workers, many of whom face abuse by employers who act with near total impunity, a human rights group said on Thursday."After reviewing more than 114 legal cases affecting migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, unfortunately we reached the conclusion that the justice system is failing them at every level," the Beirut director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), Nadim Houry, told AFP.

Human Rights Watch on Sunday criticised Kuwait for abuses against foreign female domestic workers and depriving stateless Arabs of their rights, but praised some improvements."Many domestic workers complain of confinement in the house, long working hours without rest, months or years of unpaid wages, and sometimes verbal, physical and sexual abuse," HRW said in its annual report.Some 700,000 foreign maids working in the oil-rich emirate remained without proper legal protection as they were not covered by the labour law, said the New York-based watchdog.

A domestic violence PSA campaign by Lebanese non-profit KAFA strikes a powerful chord for the women's rights movement in the Islamic world. The images feature women who have endured domestic abuse. Their wounds mimic the shape of the audio waveforms of words used against them: "whore," "slut," and "bitch."

A privately funded shelter for male victims of domestic abuse — believed to be the only refuge of its kind in the country — has closed. Men’s rights advocate Earl Silverman said he can’t afford to keep the Men’s Alternative Safe House (MASH) running. Since it opened out of his house about three years ago, close to 20 men have passed through, he said. Among them was a “father with two children, a one-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy and he was fleeing a violent, alcoholic wife.”

The government has absolutely shred the Bill or Rights in the last decade or so.

Have you wondered?  Here is one take: