Sarah Leah Whitson is the director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division based in New York. Previously a corporate attorney and human rights activist, she joined HRW five years ago. Whitson has considerable experience in the region having previously lived in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Yesterday, she gave a press conference here in Beirut for the release of a new HRW report that urges candidates for parliament to outline specific steps they will take in order to improve the human rights situation in Lebanon. The report also  detailed five areas urgently in need of reform, and will likely be a valuable resource for voters who want MPs to include the issue of human rights in their platforms for the June elections. NOW Lebanon sat down with Whitson to talk about the report, along with the broader subject of human rights in Lebanon and the region, and specifically where Lebanon stands at present.

Could you tell us about your background? What brings you to HRW and the Middle East?

Sarah Leah Whitson: I have been involved in doing human rights work in the Middle East for a long time… since the early 1990s.  And I transitioned to doing this job full-time, as in doing human rights work full-time, about 5 years ago. But prior to that, I was a lawyer, and I was working at an investment bank, and so most of my human rights work during my professional career was on the side. But I have been doing more on Iraq and a little bit on Lebanon for a long time.

What are your particular areas of interest?

Whitson: It’s not a matter of what I’m interested in. It’s the issues that we prioritize in the Middle East. And I think I would divide them into three categories generally. First has to do with the continued lack of freedom of speech and freedom of association in almost every Arab country in the Middle East, Lebanon, being clearly the most liberal space for free expression. And we make that such a big focus of our work because it’s so critical to the development of civil society, it’s so critical to the development of society for people to be able to discuss openly the shortcomings of their government… And it’s so important for people to be able to organize and assemble, and talk about these issues…

The other big part of our work is the work we do is on conflict and war. In the Middle East, that tends to involve Israel and its various wars… in Lebanon, and most recently Gaza. So we document possible war violations by all parties to conflict. In addition to Israel, we’ve done a lot of work on Iraq and the ongoing 5-year war, which I still don’t think is over…

In addition to that, we take on-spot issues that pop up on particular places. For example, we focus extensively on justice systems and the failures of the justice systems in many countries like Saudi Arabia. We focus on torture and abuse of detainees, and people caught up in the criminal justice system. We focus on migrant workers throughout the region, migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, migrant construction workers in the Emirates… Particularly with migrant workers, it’s very important for us, because there are no natural advocates for migrant workers. They are isolated, they have no support systems, no networks, they often don’t speak the language…

Could you tell us a little about the press conference this Wednesday?
 
Whitson: The press conference we’re having is meant to highlight the urgent need for human rights reform in the country. Urgent matters that require attention by the new government. And what we’d like to see, and what we’d like journalists to see and ask for, is for the various candidates and political parties to make clear their agenda for human rights and human rights reform… Specific things we’d like to see done in five priority areas, so that the voters can know and factor these positions in to their voting, and because they have a right to know their candidates’ positions are. And so that we could put candidates and political parties on the record as having made specific promises…

So for example, on torture, we want to see the candidates promise that the justice ministry and the interior ministry make public their investigations for the cases of torture. And we want them to insist and promise they will push the justice ministry and the interior ministry to submit its reports to the UN Convention Against Torture, which Lebanon ratified in 2001. Eight years later, they have yet to submit a report, which they are supposed to do under that treaty, including their initial report.

We also want candidates to take on the issue of Palestinian refugees and discrimination under law against Palestinian refugees, and to commit that they will address in particular, the restrictions on employment against Palestinians, and to put an end to this bogus justification that it has something to do with protecting their right to return… It’s time for people to speak more honestly about that.

We want candidates to make commitments to adjusting the problems of migrant domestic workers, and their continued abuse which is such a huge shame and implicates so many Lebanese families carrying out abuse in their own homes, and yet the government continues to fail to protect them by including them in the labor law. It continues to fail to prosecute cases of worker abuse. And we want them to make this a commitment, a priority, because it is an urgent matter of very vulnerable women who have no protection.

On the disappeared, we want candidates to commit to moving forward on finally resolving the issue of the disappeared in Lebanon and Syria, and putting an end to this ongoing committee that meets every year that never makes its results public, that never makes the findings known.

And finally, we want candidates to commit now, in advance of the elections, to their support for the new legislation that will allow women to pass their citizenship rights to their children, regardless of whom they marry.

These are some things voters need to know now, and get their candidates on the record. What I urge journalists to do is to insist and to ask candidates to ask their positions on each of these subjects on the specific acts we’re talking about, and not just to say yes, we think it’s very bad that migrant workers are abused, but are you going to make it part of your first 100 days to push for a new law or the revision of the labor law to include domestic workers under the provisions of the labor law.

The issue of foreign domestic worker has been on the HRW agenda for a few years now, and recently, the government finally agreed on a unified contract for all DWs. When will it be implemented and in which languages? What are the problems with the unified contract?

Whitson: The unified contract was adopted in the end of January 2009 by a decree of the Ministry of Labor. Technically, it is actually operable right now, so if you go to any notary, they should have a copy of it. Unfortunately, the contract right now by its own provisions say that it should be available in Arabic, English and French. We have asked in a letter to the Ministry of Labor to include other languages; basically, the languages that migrants speak themselves.

While the contract is an encouraging step forward, there are a number of weaknesses in the contract that we have also highlighted in the letter we sent the Ministry. The first weakness is that it doesn’t cover all issues. Specifically, it does not mention the fact that it is illegal to hold someone’s passport. And two, it also does not get into some of the core issues, namely, the right of a domestic worker to leave the house without the permission of her employer on her day-off or when she has finished working on any given day. Right now, the contract says that the migrant worker will have the right to one day off a week, which is already an encouraging step. But then it leaves it to be negotiated between the employer and the employee, whether the employee can leave the house. And that is unsatisfactory because again, it will just reinforce the restrictions on the movement.

There are other weaknesses in the contract. The [new] contract is for three years, where the norm used to be that it used be a contract for two years to allow the migrants to actually go back and visit their family and establish contact.

The other weakness has to do with the double standards applied when it comes to causes to break the contract. So for example, the employer can simply allege that the employee stole or intended to hurt the family, or committed negligence or a mistake, that can be ground for dismissal. And if they dismiss the worker, they don’t have to pay for the airline ticket back to her home country. Whereas if the migrant worker wants to break the contract because her employer beat her or ill-treated her or didn’t pay her salary on time, she actually has to prove it by either getting a police report and talk to them about the beating, or getting a report from the forensic doctor. And we all know how difficult that is today in Lebanon. These are just some of the issues.

But again, I want to emphasize that it’s an encouraging step, but that we have criticisms on it. But what is essential to prevent this contract from simply being ink on paper is to actually come up with mechanisms to enforce it, and that would be the labor inspection unit, tasked with monitoring working conditions for migrant domestic workers.

Does the new contract make any promises on changes to be made on the sponsorship system?

Whitson: It does not tackle the issue of sponsorship, and is mentioned in our report. The new contract leaves the kafeel system on its own, which also has many problems, namely because it basically ties the employee to an employer and prevents them – even if they have a very bad experience – from actually finding another employer. And to that point, Lebanon likes to pride itself in being the frontline of reforms in the region, but on this issue of reforming the kafeel system, a number of countries in the Gulf have already taken the lead, and two weeks ago, Bahrain has announced that it will actually reform its kafeel system to liberalize it. And we’re hoping that this courageous step by Bahrain will be followed by Lebanon.

How important in Lebanon is the human rights agenda, when votes usually depend more on traditional family loyalties and sectarian interests?

Whitson: Well, we have to break through that. And the way you break through that is by urging candidates to actually talk about the issues. Because whether or not I’m a Shia or a Sunni is not going to solve the economic problems of this country, it’s not going to solve the social problems of this country. What we have to talk about is, who is going to solve the problems of this country and how they’re going to do it. So, it’s our responsibility to push the electoral debate into substantive issues, away from irrelevant issues like your sectarian background.

Do you think the elections in Lebanon will be democratic? What are your opinions on the human rights dimension?

Whitson: It’s on a spectrum. There’s more democratic systems, less democratic systems. And there is no perfect democratic system. Even in the United States, you have basically a two-party system that doesn’t really give any opportunity to a third party to really be able to contest in the national elections. And in this country, there are similar limitations on who can be a party and who can run, and what seats are available on what basis. That being said, there’s no doubt that Lebanon is the only Arab country, next to Iraq, that has the most dynamic, vibrant elections, where there’s actually some kind of contest for at least a certain number of seats.

Is Lebanon ahead or behind in the region in terms of implementing human rights?

Whitson: We try not to compare one country to another because if a country is better, then it feels like it’s off the hook. And if a country’s worse, then they feel like, well, they say we’re terrible anyway. I think what I would say about Lebanon is obviously, there’s a greater respect for freedom of speech. There’s a great tolerance for diversity and a greater space for people of different religions, different beliefs, different lifestyles live together peacefully. But Lebanon could be doing a lot more and a lot better because in many spheres. In the five spheres we just raised as issues that Lebanon can and should be addressing and doing better at.