Ethiopian family joyful as migrant daughter safely returns from Lebanon

A quarter of a million migrants are employed as domestic workers in Lebanon, the majority of them Ethiopians. Most of these migrants face harsh sometimes life threatening conditions in the line of work.

After Birtukan Mekuanint left Ethiopia for Lebanon in 2017 to work as a maid for a family of eight, she managed to call her relatives back home only a few times.

She is one of thousand others who worked in strenuous conditions and says her ‘hands were bruised from hard work.’

“For six months I didn’t know if it was day or night. I worked day and night. They didn’t pay me a salary, I was always told that they didn’t have any money. My hands were bruised from the hard work.”

Her father, said he did not know what to think when his daughter emerged unannounced from a taxi outside their home in Addis Ababa last week.

Abiye Yefru, Birtukan’s father said: “I didn’t hold my tears. My wife cried, even more, she was thanking God because our daughter escaped death and came back to us so that is a big thing.”