The BBC World Service's Africa Eye team is investigating how a WhatsApp group helped rescue more than 50 women from Malawi who were trafficked to Oman to work in slave-like conditions.
Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find disturbing.
A 32-year-old woman cannot control her crying as she relives the abuse she experienced when, hoping for a better life, she found herself working as a domestic worker in Oman.
Georgina, who like all trafficked women who were interviewed by the BBC Choosing to use only her first name, she believed she had been hired to work as a driver in Dubai.
She owned and operated a small business in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, until an agent approached her and told her she could make more money online. Middle East.
It wasn't until the plane landed in Muscat, the capital of Oman, that he realized that She had been tricked and then trapped by a family that forced her to work grueling hours, seven days a week..
“I got to a point where I couldn't take it anymore,” he says, detailing how he barely had time to sleep for two hours.
He hadn't been there long when her boss started forcing her to have sex with himthreatening to kill her if she said anything about it.
“It wasn't just with him,” he reveals. “He brought his friends and they paid him later“.
She has difficulty expressing how she was forced. “I was seriously injured. She was so heartbroken.”
There are an estimated two million domestic workers in the Arab Gulf states.
In a survey of 400 women in Oman conducted by the migrant charity, Do Bold, published in 2023 by the Report US Department of State Trafficked Personsalmost all of them turned out to be victims of human trafficking.
Almost a third said they had been sexually abusedwhile half reported physical abuse and discrimination.
After several weeks, Georgina was desperate and sent a message on Facebook begging for someone to help her..
Thousands of miles away, in New Hampshire, United States38-year-old Malawian social media activist Pililani Mombe Nyoni saw her post and started investigating.
He was able to communicate with her and, for Georgina's safety, he managed to have the message deleted on Facebook. He gave her his own number. WhatsApp, which began circulating in Oman. He soon realized that the problem was broader.
“Georgina was the first victim. Then it was a girl, two girls, three girls,” he told the BBC.
“That's when I said: 'I'm going to form a group [en WhatsApp] because this looks like human trafficking'“.
More than 50 Malawian women working as domestic workers in Oman joined the group.
Then the WhatsApp group filled with voice messages and videos, some too heartbreaking to watch, detailing the horrific conditions women endured.
Many had their passports confiscated as soon as they arrived, preventing them from leaving.
Some told how they locked themselves in the bathrooms to secretly send their pleading messages.
“I feel like I'm in a prison… we can't escape,” said one. “My life is in real danger,” said another.
“I had no idea that there are people on this earth who treat others like slaves”
Nyoni started talking to charities to combat human trafficking in Malawi and was introduced to Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, founder of Greece-based Do Bold.
Do Bold works with a community of migrant workers in the Gulf countriesidentifying victims of human trafficking and forced labor and then negotiating their release with their employers.
“Employers pay an agent to supply them with a domestic worker. One of the common problems we face is when the employer or agent says, 'She can't go home unless you give me back the money I paid for her.'” , Sivolobova commented to the BBC.
“The established laws [en Omán] They prohibit a domestic employee from leaving her employer. She can't change jobs and she can't leave the country, no matter how they treat her,” she added.
This is what is known in the Middle East as the “kafala” labor system, which ties workers to their employer for the duration of their contract.
The National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking of Oman he told the BBC that the relationship between the employer and the domestic worker is contractual and that unresolved disputes can be referred to court within a week.
He added that the employer is not allowed to “impose any form of forced labor on the employee” and that he cannot retain the “passport or private documents without the written consent” of the employee.
After spending three months in Muscat, and with the help of Nyoni and another person in Oman, Georgina returned to Malawi in June 2021.
“After helping Georgina, I felt so much fury, I felt so much anger,” Nyoni says.
Georgina's case allowed her to raise the alarm in Malawi and pressure began to mount on the government to intervene.
The Center for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives (Cdedi), a charity in Malawi, launched a rescue campaign in Oman, urging authorities to return the women home.
Blessings was another of the women in Nyoni's WhatsApp group. The 39-year-old had traveled to Muscat in December 2022, leaving behind her four children with her sister, Stevelia, in Lilongwe.
He suffered severe burns in the kitchen of the house where he worked, but his employer did not allow him to return to Malawi..
“The degree of burns, believe me…, I saw that my sister could lose her own life,” Stevelia expressed to the BBC.
“I remember my sister saying, 'I came here because I needed a better life, but if I die, please take care of my children.' That hurt me.”
Stevelia began to lobby to bring her sister back home.
At the beginning, furious officer told family Blessings was deadalthough it was not true and he was finally able to return last October, with the help of the Malawian government.
“I never thought the time would come when I would see my family again, my children,” Blessings told BBC shortly after.
“I had no idea that there are people on this earth who treat others like slaves.”
The Malawian government, which also collaborated with Do Bold, says it spent more than $160,000 to bring 54 women from Oman.
But Aida Chiwalo, 23, returned in a coffin. There was no autopsy or inquest in Oman after his death.
Authorities in Oman reported that the Ministry of Labor had received no complaints from Malawian domestic workers in 2022 and only a single complaint in 2023, which had been resolved.
“Most of these women have been released because money has been paid to their employers, between US$1,000 and US$2,000”says Sivolobova.
“I mean, basically, He had to buy his freedom. And that's what bothers me. How can you buy someone else's freedom?”
A Malawi government spokesperson told the BBC that they were developing regulations “to guarantee safe, orderly and regular migration that benefits migrants, their families and the country in general.”
But Pililani Mombe Nyoni, whose WhatsApp group now serves more as a support forum for returned women, says the issue of domestic workers trafficked to Oman highlights a more serious problem in Malawi: that of poverty and unemployment.
“If young women had the opportunity to have a job in Malawi, they would not be trapped. We need to fix the country so that these young women are not trapped like this again.”
It has been difficult for Georgina to leave the trauma behind. Find calm when you go to observe the landscape of Lake Malawi, one of the largest in Africa.
“When I see those waves, it reminds me that nothing in life lasts forever. Someday this will all be history,” he says.
“I find peace and it gives me encouragement that I will return to what I was, the Georgina of before, who was independent.”
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