Towards counting As Workers: Protecting the Rights of Women Migrant Domestic Workers (WMDWs) in Lebanon Through a Participatory Policy Dialogue and Action Process

This initiative falls under a wider and concerted effort involving a number of stakeholders. The larger framework that aims to improve the situation of migrant women domestic workers (WMDWs) in Lebanon by ensuring favourable working conditions and a regulated environment that projects their rights has been submitted by the ILO as part of a larger human rights programme. A crucial and urgent component of this wider effort is the capacity building of the Ministry of Labour (MoL) to be well-equipped to lead on securing the rights of WMDWs through coordinated action with other relevant governmental and non-governmental agencies, as well as raising public awarness through a campaign including the media. Disseminated widely both directly (airport, money transfer centres, community centres, churches and other religious gathering places) and indirectly (through intermediary institutions including NGOs), the Workers' Information Guides will be printed in nine languages, including English, French and Arabic, and the languages of the countries of origin. They will complement and feed into achieving the objectives of the larger framework by raising awarness of rights and responsabilities among workers and employers and ensuring that WMDWs, as the ultimate beneficiaries, have increased knowledge of their rights. The Information Guides will present the first means of formal information widely accessible to WMDWs about their rights in Lebanon and will be an example for replication in other countries of the region. The wider intervention will meet the priorities of management, regulation and monitoring of international labour migration and the protection of the rights of domestic workers in line with the ILO's international convention and recommendation on decent work for domestic workers. The pilot phase, to date, has been led by the Ministry of Labour (MoL) in cooperation with ILO, other UN agencies, government institutions and non-governmental organizations.

Project symbol

LEB/10/05/SDC

Admin unit

RO-Arab States/DWT-Beirut

Start date

01/05/2011

End date

30/06/2013

Total allocation

242352

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

243862

Development Partners

Switzerland, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

Country/Countries

Lebanon

Outcomes

Working Conditions