国际英语新闻:US Charges Madagascar Doing Little to Stop Forced Labor

A U.S. report on human trafficking has placed Madagascar in the lowest category and claims the country's de facto government has done nothing to crack down on the practice of sending thousands of women to the Middle East, where the majority of them encounter forced labor and abuse.  The new report reduces prospects of the U.S. resuming non-humanitarian aid to the island nation, to which it suspended aid in 2009 following a coup.

The new report claims Madagascar has increasingly become “a source country for women and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking," particularly since a March 2009 coup sparked an economic crisis and “a decline in the rule of law."

The report says Madagascar's government has done little to prevent the sex trafficking or to prosecute so-called job agencies and government employees that recruit vulnerable women, often from poor, rural areas, and trick them into leaving for lucrative contracts in the Middle East.

About 800 women have returned home from Lebanon since 2009, with most women ending their contracts early because of mistreatment.  Seventeen bodies have also been shipped home from Lebanon.

The women bring back stories of torture, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, and harsh working conditions with little or no pay and little or no opportunity to escape contracts.

Over 7,000 women from Madagascar are known to work as maids in Lebanon, and in March the government repatriated 86; including 59-year-old former nurse Abeline Baholiarisoa.  She says a job agency offered a false three-year nursing contract in 1986 that led to 15 years forced labor as a maid.

She says on arrival for her new job the agency said her contract was null and void and was designed only to get her out of the country. She said her life and the lives of her children were shattered.