Up to 99% of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon are women. Their average age is 29, an age when many are menstruating and require private access to sanitation and hygiene facilities. Most live and work in private households, excluded from Lebanon’s labour law and instead governed by the Kafala system. This structure gives employers near-total control over workers’ movement and daily life. Their access to water, hygiene, and toilets is entirely dependent on their employers. In a country where public infrastructure is collapsing, this control often extends even to the most private aspects of their lives, including the free use of a toilet.

This year’s World Toilet Day theme, Accelerating Change: Sanitation for All in a Changing World, is an opportunity to reaffirm that safe sanitation is a human right, not a privilege, and to encourage both global and national actors, including policymakers in Lebanon, to make this right a reality for all. Yet, for MDWs in Lebanon, that right remains out of reach. As a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Lebanon is obliged to guarantee everyone’s right to an adequate standard of living, including access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH). However, MDW testimonies reveal a grim reality of neglect, control, and daily humiliation. A particularly alarming pattern documented in interviews is the restriction or denial of access to bathrooms.

“When I was living with my employer, I did not have a private bathroom. I had to wait until no one was around to change my pad. Sometimes I waited too long and leaked onto my clothes. I couldn’t wash properly. I felt dirty, but there was nothing I could do.” 

“I can’t take a shower when my employer is at home.” 

“It makes me feel dirty and ashamed. I worry all day about leaks when I don’t have enough pads. I try not to stand too close to customers because I don’t want them to smell me.”

These accounts show that access to sanitation is far from guaranteed. For some, the bathroom is their only place to be alone, cry, or regain composure; it serves as a small refuge of fragile privacy in a life otherwise ruled by surveillance and confinement.

“I’m used to it, I let the moment pass when I’m in too much pain, I hide in the toilets if I’m at work.”

As a result of the escalation of the Israeli war on Lebanon at the end of 2024, these violations took an even harsher form during displacement. One woman shared:

“There was no bathroom to wash or even go. We used to do it behind a tree or at a friend’s house.”

Such testimonies, echoed across MWA and Jeyetna’s research on period poverty, show that denial of sanitation and menstrual care compounds gendered and racialised inequalities. Fear, shame, and anxiety accompany every attempt at basic hygiene, linking physical suffering to emotional distress. These conditions are not accidental; they result from structural systems that devalue migrant women’s bodies and labour.

Lebanon’s sanitation crisis is not just a failure of infrastructure. It is sustained by political and social exclusion. The Kafala system, paired with the absence of migrant inclusion in national WaSH and humanitarian frameworks, continues to deny MDWs basic health, dignity, and autonomy. Without privacy, safety, and cleanliness, migrant women endure constant stress and humiliation that takes a profound toll on their well-being.

As Lebanon continues to face instability, the sanitation crisis needs more than short-term aid. It requires dismantling structures that perpetuate inequality. 

On this World Toilet Day, we call on the Lebanese government, international organisations, and local actors to:

• Recognise migrant domestic workers as having a right to safe and dignified access to sanitation and hygiene facilities in their workplaces and homes, and take practical steps to guarantee this access.

• Require all humanitarian shelters to guarantee minimum standards of sanitation and menstrual hygiene for migrant domestic workers, and enact labour reforms that recognise these as fundamental rights.

• Commit to funding and supporting community-driven, gender-sensitive sanitation solutions that involve migrant domestic workers in both design and decision-making processes.

• Integrate the issues of sanitation, mental health, and labour rights for migrant domestic workers into national migration and protection policies, ensuring comprehensive support at all regulatory levels.

Sanitation is not just about toilets. It is about dignity, equality, and every woman’s right to live with safety and self-respect, regardless of her status.