Lebanon: ‘Nature in the city: Blog Action Day 2009′

This post is part of Blog Action Day’s global discussion on climate change

By: Simba Russeau

Student project at IBSAR’s IBDAA day (©Simba Russeau)

Beirut, (Witnessing Life) – In Lebanon, cultures are deeply rooted in the land. No one is immune to the nature of everyday living.

The environment is facing unprecedented challenges from climate change and continued loss of biodiversity, sparking a need for a new era of conservation that embraces sustainable lifestyles and livelihoods as well as endangered species.

Cities themselves present both the problems and solutions to sustainability challenges in an increasingly urbanized world.

In December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly designated May 22nd, International Biological Diversity Day (IBDAA), and in keeping with this tradition, American University of Beirut’s nature conservation center for sustainable futures, IBSAR, hosted it’s 3rd annual fair highlighting 2009’s theme ‘Nature in the city.’

Biodiversity is nature in its diversity including non-living elements and diverse living forms, such as plants, animals, microorganisms and their genes, their habitants, and the interdependence that connects them.

This year’s theme highlighted the importance of conversation and creating sustainable use of biological diversity in urban environments.

Nour Najem, IBSAR staff coordinator for IBDAA 2009 said, in keeping with the idea of biodiversity, “We wanted to involve as many members of the AUB community as we could. There were people from ceramics, business marketing, literature, civil engineering, and chemistry and biology.”

“Because there were so many disciplines promoting IBDAA this year, I think it was successful.”

Hundreds of AUB students and faculty toured the Green Oval quad to view poster presentations set up by AUB students showcasing their personal interests in promoting biological diversity in Lebanon.

Some student projects built upon the efforts of previous research from 2008, furthering the work of their peers as a means of promoting sustainable utilization of Lebanon’s biological resources.

“An important highlight of this years fair is that we formed an advisory committee to look at all of the various ways of taking projects created in previous years to the next level,” says Dr. Najat Saliba professor of Chemistry at AUB.

“For successful projects we look for funding to develop the products so that they are ready for the international market.”

Among the themes was research conducted around pollution, climate change and fish farms.

“The first local Lebanese fish farm was created in 1965 in Hermel. Today, fish farms are everywhere in Lebanon; however, they are not properly managed.”

Pre-med students Zeinab Abou Yehia, Mobaddaa Assi and Radwan Masoud in the Biology department, concluded that the principle form of aquaculture – Fish farming – offers an alternative solution to the increasing market demand for fish and fish protein.

Relating it to IBSAR’s annual IBDAA event, Zeinab said, “I wanted to do a study for Lebanon and we have more than 200 fish farms due to the absence of regulations and you don’t need a license. Also, we wanted to emphasize the importance of having more environmental friendly fish farms and to conduct more research to find ways of protecting our native fish population.”

“We are disrupting nature’s cycle and changing the biodiversity of the fish by not isolating the farmed fish, which allows for sea lice and various diseases to infect the wild population,” adds Mobaddaa.

Indeed, IBSAR’s efforts to involve as many members of the community went into art – with drawings from students of AUB Instructor, Dr. Ghada Jamal as well as the ceramics department, which explored the relationship of clay objects to the sea and its shores.

The environmental health department developed several studies around the impact of war on the environment – such as the growing costs of landmines.

“Landmines have been planted in different parts of the world not only to secure borders but also to continue harming thousands of innocent people many years after,” Aya Fayyad an AUB student and creator of the project said.

“They also have adverse economical, environmental and public health affects. Also, the tentative restoration of lands and water bodies contaminated with landmines keep increasing yearly environmental costs. In order to minimize this global problem, states should sign the treaty to ban landmines, to secure a world free of landmines and a healthier future.”

It is well known that cigarettes are one major cause of pollution due to second hand smoke and the apparent display of cigarette butts that litter the streets of Lebanon.

“Every year more than five billion cigarette butts are collected, making it a major environmental problem,” say Chemistry students Samer AbouArbid and Adham Farah.

Using the AUB campus as the center of their research AbouArbid and Farah collected samples of cigarette butts and treated them so they can be used in alternative productions – such as cloth and video film.

A more enjoyable project dealt with the issue of traffic, which is becoming a major problem that is increasing with urbanization and affecting nature greatly, especially in Lebanon. ‘What if AUB students rode bikes?’ created by Sawson Allam, Rawan Gebran and Roy Souaid explored how bikes could increase the availability of parking spaces and decrease pollution and traffic levels.

However, one key component missing in the research was how to create lanes on Lebanon’s highways for bikers to reach their destination safely.

In the end, one of IBSAR’s own ‘Bio-prospecting in the Middle East initiative’ found a cozy home among the exhibits.

One of the main focal points for IBSAR is identifying various medicinal uses of plants native to Lebanon and for students like Mohammad Darwish and Ihsan Ghazal that seemed like an interesting cause to delve into.

“Inula has been regarded as one of the most important medicinal plants in the Mediterranean region,” says Darwish.

“When used as an ointment its treats anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial. Our procedure shows a better, more natural and cheaper way of treating wounds but more importantly we’ve created a method for our product to be stored and preserved so that wounds can be treated in the city where the plant does not grow!”

“We are trying to raise awareness by recruiting non-conventional partners of biodiversity conservation like Cell Biologists, Family Physicians, or Economists,” adds Dr. Salma Talhouk, Director of IBSAR.

“It’s important to have a multi-disciplinary group that works closely with one another to introduce the various economic benefits of cultivating and producing products for the international market.”

She cried with them and told their story

Lebanese filmmaker Dima Al-Joundi’s documentary, “Bonne à Vendre/Maid for Sale,” about the plight of Sri Lankan domestic workers in Lebanon, was screened at a film festival hosted by Courrier International in Paris. Simba Russeau sat down with Al-Joundi in Beirut.

By SIMBA RUSSEAU, Special to MENASSAT

Filmmaker Dima Al-Joundi in Beirut. © Simba Russeau

BEIRUT, October 24, 2008 (MENASSAT) – Lebanese filmmaker Dima Al-Joundi never did care much for the stereotypes about her country: “The Paris of the Middle East,” “The Riviera of the Arab World,” “The Swiss-like Arab country…”

So when she set out to make a film about the plight of Sri Lankan domestic workers in Lebanon, she had no qualms about exposing some of the less rosy aspects of her motherland.

Al-Joundi’s cleverly named documentary, “Bonne à Vendre/Maid for Sale”, couldn’t come at a more opportune time.

A string of reports have come out in the last year, both in newspapers and from human rights organizations, highlighting the abuses and exploitation of African and Asian domestic workers face, especially Sri Lankan maids. Human rights groups contend existing laws don’t protect foreign domestic workers in Lebanon, and the country does not have a clear national policy to fight abuses against workers.

‘Modern-day slavery’

Human Rights Watch in Lebanon released a report in August that said that 95 migrant domestic workers had died in Lebanon since January 2008. About 40 of the cases were suicides, while 24 were described as workers falling from high-rise buildings, often in an attempt to escape their employers, the report concluded.

A classic documentary filmmaker, Al-Joundi told MENASSAT that “Bonne à Vendre” was her attempt at shining a light on the situation, “and to give voice to these silent women” who have been suffering within a system that Al-Joundi doesn’t hesitate to characterize as “modern day slavery.”

In a way, the subject chose her.

Al-Joundi was living and working in Sri Lanka in the nineties, just when Lebanon, which was starting to recover from the 1975-1990 civil war, was becoming a destination of choice for the Sri Lankan recruitment agencies.

She remembers the scene vividly.

“It was dawn and I was on a bus with these Sri Lankan women – there must have been sixty of them, and they were all going to Lebanon to work as maids. The women were squeezing me against the window as they rushed to say a last goodbye to their families,” Al-Joundi recalls.

“They were crying and I found myself crying with them. I said to myself, ‘There is something wrong with this situation. These women are leaving their own babies behind!’ So I decided to begin researching the subject, which is when I discovered that there was this major business in domestic workers between Sri Lanka and the Middle East.”

Back in Lebanon, Al-Joundi embarked on a one-and-a-half-year cinematic project to highlight the life of the Asians in Beirut’s streets, the markets, the beach and in the Lebanese homes where they worked.

To set the stage, the film introduces Janika, a domestic worker from Sri Lanka, in her traditional pink maid’s uniform, cleaning the vegetables, preparing dinner and washing the dishes in the home of her Lebanese employer.

“While working I think always about my country,” says Janika. “My heart is with my husband and my children. Although I am here, for more than three years I have cried for my daughter.”

Soon, Al-Joundi decided she had to go back to Sri Lanka to find the other side of the story. As a Lebanese woman in Sri Lanka, it wasn’t hard to find.

“Every time I would take a ‘tuk-tuk’ or the bus, men would ask me, ‘Madame, can you please take my wife to Lebanon?’ It got so bad that after a while I started telling everyone that I was French.”

The maids and their employers are only part of the story; the recruitment agencies are another.

A lucrative business

In her film, Al-Joundi highlights the role of the Sri Lankan recruitment agencies that target the poor, the uneducated and the desperate.

In one scene, a woman doesn’t have the money to pay for the burial of a loved one. So in a matter of minutes, a recruiting agent is able to convince her to sign a contract.

As part of their recruitment campaign, Sri Lankan agents often lure these women by presenting Lebanon as a land of plenty and a place where one can earn high salaries.

Many women go into debt in order to pay the fees for training, visa, travel expenses and guaranteed work abroad.

At the same time, the Lebanese employer typically pay up to $3,000 in fees to the recruitment agencies.

The agency collects on both ends.

Once they arrive in Lebanon, the maids discover the reality of being a domestic worker in the Arab world.

“For the Lebanese, maids are like having a DSL connection where you pay a monthly fee and you have 24 hour access, and when you leave the house you leave it connected because anyways it won’t affect your bill,” Al-Joundi said.

There is little the maid can do once she is in the country.

Her legal status in Lebanon depends on the “kafalat,” or guarantee, that the employer has obtained on her behalf for the duration of her contract. To protect their ‘investment,’ recruitment agencies encourage the employer to confiscate the maid’s passport and other identity papers.

“I put it to the Sri Lankan recruiter I interviewed for my film like this: ‘What if I take you out of your country, take away your passport, make you work more than 20 hours a day for only $100 per month as well as lock you in the house? What would you call this? It’s not only racism, it’s slavery.”

Training schools in Sri Lanka offer newly exported domestic workers a 10-day Arabic course, household appliance training and how to please their new employer.

“I was the first in 1996 to visit these training schools, which no one from the outside had ever seen before,” says Al-Joundi. “This is where the women learn how to tend to their household duties because the Arab woman is very picky about hygiene.”

Funding the war

According to the Sri Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment, there are now over 86,000 Sri Lankan women employed as domestic workers in Lebanon. They constitute the largest population of female migrant workers in the country. (Women from the Philippines, another big category, are more often employed as nannies.)

The economic impact of the domestic workers trade in Sri Lanka is huge.

In 2006, Sri Lanka received $3.4 billion in remittances from migrant workers abroad, making it the second-highest form of foreign exchange, and twice the amount the country receives in foreign aid and direct foreign investment. In fact, domestic workers now surpass tea as a Sri Lankan export product.

Recently, Kingsley Ranawaka, chairman of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), was quoted as saying that Sri Lanka is planning to cut the number of women migrants exported to the Middle East due to the growing number of complaints of ill-treatment, breach of contract, sexual and physical abuse and unpaid wages.

Until now, it seems the Sri Lankan government has been quite content to allow the trade to go on.

“One of the things I discovered while making this film was that the Sri Lankan government was very happy to export their women abroad and treat them like they are cattle because their contribution to the national income is helping to fund the war against the Tamil Tigers,” Al-Joundi says.

“So neither the Middle Eastern nor the Sri Lankan governments want this business to stop.”

Redefining gender roles through oriental dance

By: Simba Russeau, NOW contributor

October 9, 2009

Alexandre Paulikevitch (Simba Russeau)

Alexandre Paulikevitch’s debut Oriental dance performance, “Mouhawala Oula,” was highly anticipated by those who have followed the artist’s evolution in creating this unique body of work, which challenges gender stereotypes.

“After living in Paris for six years, I made a decision to return to Lebanon in 2006 after the July war. At the time I had a choice to either continue living in exile in Europe, where there is access to the cultural arts, or return to my country of birth, where it is very difficult to work and organize in the artistic field due to lack of interest on the government level in artistic and cultural affairs,” the Lebanese dancer says.

“I wanted to create an identity for myself, and Lebanon’s cultural scene is ripe for developing pioneering work.”

“Mouhawala Oula” (“First Try”) opened to a packed crowd on Thursday night at the Sunflower Theatre in Tayouneh, Beirut. This solo piece, accompanied by a saxophonist, combined the contemporary and traditional in a way that has never been seen on a Beirut stage. Paulikevitch danced his traditional, flowing moves in a simple T-shirt and white trousers, eschewing the drag or stereotypical female “belly dancer” costume worn by other male oriental dancers.

Behind him, video of various locations in Lebanon and destruction in Beirut was projected on to a large screen to give the impression that he was dancing there. A videographer, who was on stage with Paulikevitch, filmed him, images that were also projected in real time for the audience.

Beyond “belly dance”

Oriental dance, or Raks Sharki, as it is known here, developed through the influence of various cultures, notably India. During the French colonial period, it became known as the “dance du ventre,” or the dance of the stomach because, according to Paulikevitch, this style of movement that focused on the belly and hips was new to the Europeans. In the 40s, when Egypt became open to the Western world and tourism increased, US society coined the term “belly dance,” he says.

“The term ‘belly dancing’ has a very vulgar and colonial nomination and in this exploration of the movement it was my aim to reject this portrayal,” Paulikevitch says. “Throughout the process I also started rejecting the use of oriental dance, because this label was also created by western societies and technically the orient is located in the Far East.”

During colonial times, oriental dance was viewed as a means of enticement and pleasure. Traditionally, its origins are related to goddess worship, stemming from fertility cults, scholars believe. These rituals included sacred dancing that focused on the abdomen. When men perform, they are often seen as imitating women, and society does not always accept this challenge to defined gender roles.

“I think a lot of people who attended the performance were shocked because he really would feel the music,” audience member Nassib El Khoury said after the show. “Some people even left the performance and there was laughter from the crowd because of our society, which still has trouble accepting men who can move like women.”

During the French orientalist period, various works about Arabs, Islam, and the Middle East – such as Gerard de Nerval’s Voyage in the Orient – contributed to painting a negative image of oriental dance. However, de Nerval was also the first to document the existence of men performing oriental dance, suggesting that historically it was not uncommon for men to perform this movement.

Most dances, especially in the Middle East, have roles for the different genders. Paulikevitch looks to emphasize technique and freedom of movement and self-expression, rather than gender.

Paulikevitch brought the emphasis back to the spiritual aspect of dance and the art of the technique during his performance Thursday night. Many in the audience were mesmerized by his grace and fluidity of movement.

Paulikevitch hopes to set the stage for other artists to pursue this kind of movement. Initially in pursuit of a career in contemporary dance at the University of Paris VIII, Paulikevitch fell in love with oriental dance and the opportunity to research and revisit his roots.

“The spiritual side of dance has always existed and I believe in creativity itself as being deeply spiritual,” Paulikevitch says. “It directly contrasts with the superficial notions that the dance is purely physical or that it is something women do to entice men. Oriental dance nourishes the body and the soul.”

Originally scheduled to run till Saturday, “Mouhawala Oula,” has been extended to Sunday October 11th due to popular demand.

LEBANON: Plight of the trafficked domestic worker

by: Simba Russeau

Photo: Simba Russeau/IRIN

Philippine women make up a large number of the estimated 200,000 domestic workers in Lebanon

BEIRUT, 30 September 2009 (IRIN) – Abbey was a nurse at a French hospital in Madagascar when a recruitment agency suggested to her boss that she travel to Lebanon for three years to work and learn Arabic so she could better care for the Arab sailors whose ships docked at the Indian Ocean island.

Abbey, not her real name, was presented by the recruitment agent with a three-year contract, which included transport to the Lebanese hospital, and a salary of US$1,000 per month.

On arrival there, however, she was put in a house with another Madagascan domestic worker where she was forced to cook, clean and care for three children and a newborn.

“We didn’t sleep day or night; we had to be up whenever the baby cried. We didn’t even have time to shower or eat during the day because we were always rocking him so he didn’t cry. It was like that for two and a half years,” Abbey told IRIN.

Politicians are also involved in this issue and it goes underground, which is why it’s difficult to get laws to protect these women

From her salary of just $150 a month, Abbey said she had to give her Lebanese employer money to buy food for her: “So basically, we were working for free.”

Cases like Abbey’s are not uncommon in Lebanon, which is a country of destination for women trafficked from Africa, Sri Lanka and the Philippines for the purpose of domestic labour.

In June, Lebanon was added to the US State Department’s human trafficking tier 2 watch list for its failure to protect victims of trafficking or to prosecute those responsible.

Inclusion on the list, which includes neighbouring Syria on tier 3 (the worst category), for a second year could mean Lebanon faces US sanctions on non-humanitarian and trade-related aid and US opposition to loans and credits from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Deception, exploitation

Being deceived about the job she was brought to Lebanon to perform makes Abbey’s case one of trafficking under the established UN definition of the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force”.

However, the US State Department’s 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report makes clear it considers trafficking to include the conditions a worker is kept in, including forced labour and debt bondage. That makes not only Abbey’s life after arriving in Lebanon a case of trafficking but means the situation of many of Lebanon’s estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers can also be considered trafficking.

Photo: Simba Russeau/IRIN

Lebanon currently has over 5,000 domestic workers from Madagascar. The conditions many face working in the country constitute trafficking, according to the US State Department

“Women from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Ethiopia who travel to Lebanon legally to work as household servants often find themselves in conditions of forced labour through withholding of passports, non-payment of wages, restrictions on movement, threats, and physical or sexual assault,” said the TIP report.

Local rights activists praised the recognition of exploitative labour conditions as trafficking.

“Working on trafficking is very difficult because of the definition set by the UN, but if you simplify it you see that there are three main components: the recruitment; deception or coercion; and then that the purpose of recruitment is exploitative. This is considered trafficking,” said Ghada Jabbour, gender and trafficking specialist at Lebanese NGO KAFA.

The TIP report said that exploitation includes the specific crimes of “involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery”.

After escaping from the home she was forced to work in, Abbey has spent the past 10 years working as a freelance domestic worker, facing jail if she is caught by police without the identification papers she was never issued with, and owing $5,000 in fines to the General Security Directorate, a Lebanese intelligence agency, for overstaying her visa.

Photo: Simba Russeau/IRIN

A taxi driver speaks with an African migrant worker in Beirut

Little protection

Domestic workers remain outside Lebanon’s Labour Law and its protection.

Last year, according to the 2009 TIP report, the Lebanese government reported no criminal prosecutions, convictions, or punishments for trafficking offences, a significant decrease from the 17 prosecutions reported in 2007.

The Lebanese Penal Code does not specifically prohibit forced labour or trafficking, but Article 569’s prohibition against the deprivation of an individual’s liberty to perform a task could be used to prosecute forced labour. Commercial sexual exploitation, deprivation of freedom and use of false documents are also criminalized in Lebanese law.

The TIP report urges authorities to investigate and prosecute claims by domestic workers who have escaped abusive employers, and implement the new unified contract for domestic workers created in March this year, but which rights groups say remains largely unimplemented.

Valuable trade

Activists believe the value of the trade in domestic workers is such that the political will to comply with international regulations against trafficking remains lacking.

“The money that is collected through domestic workers coming to Lebanon is millions of dollars per year. You have the residency fees, the visa and recruitment fees on both sides for the worker and the employer,” said KAFA’s Jabbour.

“The government takes a lot of money in the process by regulating domestic workers and there are a lot of stakeholders. Politicians are also involved in this issue and it goes underground, which is why it’s difficult to get laws to protect these women.”