Filipino and Ethiopian migrant workers in Lebanon faced displacement and homelessness during the recent conflict with little access to aid or evacuation plans.
Migrant workers in Lebanon endured displacement, homelessness and acute uncertainty when the recent war reached their communities, with many turning to ad hoc aid networks run by migrant organizations when formal assistance proved unavailable. Evelyn Alhazzam, a 40-year-old Filipino living in Ghobeiry, was in her home when an Israeli airstrike struck nearby, injuring her husband. Her children helped carry him outside in a blanket to seek safety. Like hundreds of other migrant workers across the country, she found herself with nowhere to go and few options for help.
The scale of displacement became clear to Myra Aragon, one of the founders of Tres Marias, a Filipino community center in Beirut established six years ago. Phone calls began arriving at three in the morning from people asking where to go. "We were receiving calls from different nationalities," Aragon said. "They were asking for food, transportation, a place to stay." The center, originally designed as a gathering space, became an emergency shelter because the need was acute and no other help was available.
Many migrant workers faced additional barriers to seeking assistance. Some did not know which organizations could help them. Others feared asking for aid because of their legal status, financial situation or previous experiences of abuse. The uncertainty extended across multiple nationalities, each group facing its own complications in accessing support during the emergency.
Enu Tsigereda Birhanu, deputy director of Egna Lenga Besidet, a Beirut-based migrant-led humanitarian and advocacy organization, emphasized that the war exposed problems that predated the conflict. "Migrant workers were already forgotten before the war," she said. "During the economic crisis, many people lost their jobs, they were thrown out like garbage." The recent displacement was not an isolated crisis but the culmination of years of precarious conditions.
Domestic workers faced particular vulnerability because of the kafala system, which ties a worker's legal status to their employer. When conflict spread across Lebanon, many had no evacuation plans, no financial reserves and no family networks to rely on. Birhanu began work linking displaced migrants with organizations and individuals who could offer practical support.
Hirout Wobshet, 38, an Ethiopian woman who had lived in Lebanon since 2007, was in the Jwaya area with three children when fighting intensified in the south. The family endured days without electricity, light or water. "They told us to leave the area," Wobshet said. With children aged 12, 7 and 4, she worried constantly about their safety as the situation deteriorated around them.
The conditions deteriorated further as fear and physical hardship compounded. Wobshet became ill and her children fell sick as well. "I was in a very bad condition," she said. "I was sick and I couldn't go out with my kids. My kids got sick too." The family remained inside as fighting intensified, isolated and without basic necessities.
Today Wobshet has returned to an area near Sour, but the place she came back to is unrecognizable. Her belongings are gone. The stability she had built is gone. The sense of security she had known in Lebanon has disappeared. "I have never seen anything like this in my life," she said. "I have seen everything in my life here."
The displacement of migrant workers during the war laid bare the systemic vulnerabilities that had long characterized their position in Lebanese society. Organizations like Tres Marias and Egna Lenga Besidet stepped into the gap left by the absence of formal structures to protect or assist them. Without such grassroots networks, many migrant workers would have had no help at all, a reality that underscores how dependent displaced migrants remain on informal aid and the goodwill of their own communities rather than on institutional support systems.
