Through the abuse, workers are often subject to passport confiscation, withholding of wages, physical abuse, denial of medical care, and restrictions on movement.

This is known as the Kafala System: an immigration framework that ties a worker's legal residency entirely to their employer. Migrant workers are subject to document confiscation, no time-off, and withheld wages (https://hir.harvard.edu/modern-day-slavery-the-kafala-system-in-lebanon/). Occasionally, they are also victims of long hours and sexual abuse.

Lebanon's migrant workers, numbering from 170,000 to 177,000, come from Ethiopia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, to name a few (https://academic.oup.com/migration/article/14/2/mnag020/8658749).

These conditions are often tied to the ongoing economic crisis in Lebanon, which began in October of 2019, and since then, many migrant workers have become vulnerable to exploitation and are unable to return home due to travel restrictions and lack of funding. That being said, Lebanese households and businesses have lost their savings, causing employers to stop paying migrant workers (https://www.csis.org/analysis/importance-marginalized-communities-lebanon).

Overall, the common abuse these workers receive is a total violation of human rights, and they pay a price for damaging Lebanon’s global reputation. In response, change has become limited, and criticism of the Lebanese government has become a daily story. Although efforts to pass updated labor laws have been discussed, the effort remains shy of the change workers desperately need.

Yet, many international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and the International Labor Organization, have called for urgent reforms to protect migrant workers' rights in Lebanon, but little progress has been made.