A wig hangs on one of the walls in the room shared by five of the Sierra Leone girls who live together. Its use is widespread within the African community, to the point that owning several wigs or being able to change hairstyles often is a symbol of social status and its way of showing that they have economic capacity. NGOs such as This is Lebanon, are in charge of providing housing for the girls who escape from the Kafala System so they can stay and live while they find a solution to their situation. This NGO is also responsible for denouncing people and families who have abused domestic workers on its website.

Ramatu Kamara from Sierra Leone (left) is in her bed in the room of the apartment that she shares with up to fifteen girls who have escaped from the Kafala System. Although their main concern is to return to their country of origin without money because they do not want to offend their relatives, their situation is unsustainable and many of them suffer psychological pressure that often leads to their mental health being affected and fall into addictions. The conditions in which these domestic workers are treated are labor exploitation, and they frequently live under threats from their sponsors. Some of them detail that the families they work for force them to work many hours a day, hardly being able to sleep, and the food they are given is often in poor condition. Some also report sexual abuse and threats. All these subhuman conditions make some of them decide to commit suicide, after denouncing their situation and seeing that no one offers them a solution to their problem.

Mariam works out on an old elliptical machine while one of her roommates does another's hair. Living in a small apartment with up to 15 girls for such a long time together has created strong bonds of friendship between some of them, although living together and the pressure they are subjected to sometimes leads to fights and arguments. To date, all these girls have been evicted from this apartment by the police due to complaints from the neighbours.

Portrait of Elisabeth (23) in the room that she shares with her younger sister Martha (20), both of whom are from Benin. She arrived with her sister in Lebanon a little over a year and a half ago through an intermediary agent from her country named Alex. He assigned her some owners who would pay for his cleaning and house maintenance services, but they never did. They also treated her badly and even when she was sick they denied her basic needs, so Elisabeth ran away from this house. Now he is waiting for help from the Benin consulate in Lebanon and trying to raise the necessary money to return to his country with his family.

Zainab (left) and Sallay Jalloh (right), both from Sierra Leone, are cooking on the terrace of one of their neighbors because they don't have more butane gas to use in their kitchen. They arrived to Lebanon few years ago to work as a domestic workers under the Kafala System, but they managed to escape from the houses that they were working without because they were not being paid by their owners. The situation in many Beirut neighborhoods like this is especially critical. Poverty prevails among the neighbors and with a failed state in terms of social assistance to vulnerable groups, these girls only have sporadic jobs to survive, including prostitution or charity for neighbors and NGOs in the area.

Mariam (left) serves the food with the help of Sallay Jalloh (right), who shines a light on her with her mobile phone. They are both from Sierra Leone, and they have been working under the Kafala System for a long time. Now, they share an apartment in Beirut, living in poverty. The economic situation of this group of girls is unsustainable, and on many occasions they spend days without being able to eat anything. The help of NGO's like This is Lebanon is essential to receive help and thus be able to survive, but also to denounce the problem of the Kafala System and to receive the necessary economic resources to be able to return to their country of origin one day.

Emilian, originally from Benin, has just run away from the house where she was working as a domestic worker in labor exploitation conditions and hugs Mariam, a girl who a time ago was working as a domestic worker within the Kafala System and who now helps girls like Emilian to get out of this modern slavery system, and to be able to start a new life or to return to their country. In 2017, statistics showed that women killed in Lebanon due to the Kafala System were around 2 per week. Many of them, either by suicide or while trying to escape from the houses where they are forced to live. Currently, due to the economic crisis in which the country is immersed, it is feared that this number has increased much more. Most of these women come from African and South East Asian countries, countries in which intermediary agents have become powerful and have total freedom of movement to capture these girls and take them to Middle Eastern countries.

Sallay Jalloh (left), Mariam (center) and Mariam (right) are on a beach on the outskirts of Beirut. Lacking money, most of the girls spend most of the day in the apartment where they live, a fact that aggravates the psychological and mental pressure they are subjected to. In addition, those who work and can afford it, often work so many hours a day that they hardly have time for any type of leisure activity outside of work. Most of them spend the day at home resting, talking with their relatives or trying to carry out the paperwork to be able to return to their country as soon as possible. It is really difficult for them to get out of the spiral of sadness and despair that they find themselves in without signs of a hopeful future.

Martha (left), Mariam (center left), Mariam (center right) and Sallay Jalloh (right) walking down one of the main streets of Beirut. What unites all these girls from Sierra Leone and Benin is that they have all been working for months or years in conditions of slavery due to the permissiveness of the Lebanese authorities with the Kafala System. All of them had their passports taken away when they arrived in the country and have endured mistreatment, assault, sexual abuse and many other violations of their human rights. Now, most of them are looking for a way to pay for a plane ticket back to their country to reunite with their family.