What We Do

Fair Work Lebanon supports a diverse community of organizations, initiatives and people advocating for justice, equality, and dignity.

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Supporting Workers

Active listening. Empathy. Passion. These are a few traits (to say the least) that our team excels in. Casework means that staff are readily available to assist workers in a timely manner throughout the whole case journey. This includes being available during weekends and holidays. We have set up an emergency system to ensure we are available to workers when they need us the most. Being an effective caseworker means getting all the information needed to study the case while also ensuring the worker is comfortable and safe to share all her information with us in a non-judgmental and empowering space. Throughout the journey of the case, caseworkers are relaying information back from the legal and negotiations teams, to the worker and her family. The aim is to validate the worker’s feelings and support her towards making informed decisions.
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Negotiation

Patience. Non judgemental. Knowledgeable. These are the traits that define our negotiators when they engage in dialogue with various individuals including sponsors, employers and recruitment agents. One of the most important assets to being able to negotiate successfully is to have a thorough understanding of the Kafala system in Lebanon and the region. This also includes having a thorough understanding of the context of recruitment in origin countries. With that knowledge and a deep understanding of the mentalities and behaviors of employers and agents, negotiators are able to navigate complex conversations which often are underscored with normalized abuse and sentiments of racism and xenophobia. However, to be an effective negotiator means to understand that “ the adversary is not the person across the table; the adversary is the situation” (Chriss Voss, former FBI negotiator). With this understanding in mind, the art of negotiations requires negotiators to skilfully provide a non judgemental space for employers to share their side of the story, with the aim to find an amicable solution for all parties involved.
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Legal

Our legal department is instrumental in securing justice for the women we serve, and just as importantly, in reporting cases to the responsible governmental authorities. While the judicial system in Lebanon is not very effective we have been able to identify where we can implement the most change. Mainly, this has been in assisting workers who are trapped in Lebanon to safely be repatriated. Other actions include dropping false charges of theft, checking for complaints put against workers by employers, blacklisting employers and agents, and lawyer negotiations.
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Monitoring & Documentation

With several years of experience under our belt, we have a lot to learn from all the cases we’ve worked on and to equally share these learnings with other like minded people driven to end Kafala. We continuously work on data management to increase our evidence base. While once employers thought abuse happened behind closed doors, today we and our partners are monitoring and documenting all these abuses.
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Advocacy

While a lot of our efforts are focused on rescuing trapped women in modern slavery, we equally understand the importance of fighting the whole system. We do this by sharing our data, experience and learnings and form collaborations with other organizations to work on evidence based policy recommendations and strategic advocacy campaigns.