?I wanted to die?: Abused migrant women in Lebanon face detention

She and five other women protesting at the Kenyan consulate stayed there for several months without access to a phone, little information about their repatriation case, and they say they were not allowed to leave.Myriam Prado, a Philippine worker in Lebanon for 28 years, and co-founder of the Alliance of Migrant Domestic Workers in the country, told Al Jazeera she has heard complaints against the shelter from several different women with various nationalities.“If you want to go inside of Caritas you have to stay there. This is the number one complaint I’ve heard from a lot of women,” she told Al Jazeera.Several rights groups such as the Lebanese Center for Human Rights and the Anti-Racism Movement have also denounced these practices at the Caritas shelter.Sources told Al Jazeera that Caritas signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Lebanese General Security bureau to use the shelter as an unofficial detention centre.Head of the migrant department at Caritas, Hessen Sayyah, confirmed to Al Jazeera the organisation  signed the MoU with General Security, but said claims the shelter acts as a detention facility “are false”.Instead, the document details Caritas’ work at General Security’s official detention centres “to help prisoners and detainees,” and secondly, “to protect victims of human trafficking”, she said.“[The domestic workers] are coming voluntarily and they can leave our shelter voluntarily. This is a shelter protecting victims of human trafficking, we have people with severe cases and high-protection risk.”Hessen Sayyah also said month-long delays in repatriating domestic workers are common because of legal obstacles.Kenyan consulate authorities say these include the criminal cases filed against the workers by their employers, difficulties in retrieving the workers’ passports, and fundraising to pay for their plane tickets.About 100 women are currently in the Caritas shelter, including 20 other Kenyan domestic workers, according to Caritas, who should fly home before the end of January.