by NADDA OSMAN
After visiting Lebanon for the first time as a tourist in 2019, French-Thai photographer Aline Deschamps was shocked by the conditions domestic workers found themselves in. Deschamps began to document the small apartments many were living in as she became aware of the rising rate of abuse against domestic workers in the country.
“These women were all confined and living on top of each other in a small apartment. It was continuously hot, noisy and very hard for them to be trapped in such a small place,” Deschamps told Middle East Eye.
Lebanon has nearly 250,000 migrant domestic workers, the vast majority of them women. Last year, protests broke out over the controversial kafala system, where the residency of foreign workers is tied to the sponsorship of their employer, often leaving them with no protection under Lebanese law.
Deschamps focused her project on women from Sierra Leone after she discovered 15 women living in one small bedroom apartment, most of them telling her they had escaped from abusive households. During her time in Beirut, Deschamps started to notice the number of women ending up on the streets, after having escaped abusive households, increase, and the apartment got more crowded.
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