In the shadow of the pandemic, domestic violence and slavery are still flourishing

We cannot let the rise in domestic violence, in all its forms, disappear from the agenda. Beyond Lebanon, it is an issue impacting homes in every country, in every town, and likely in every street, writes Bel Trew

Covid isolation periods and the associated impacts of the pandemic continue to allow abusers to go to new extremes to exert control (Getty)

With such monstrous nonchalance, the man in the short video clip drags the Ethiopian domestic worker by her hair down the street in broad daylight. She is screaming her heart out as her shoes are ripped off by the concrete underneath her. He loosens his grip briefly to savagely beat her. People watch from their balconies, someone is clearly filming.

This disturbing video was shot just a few kilometres east of Beirut. Activists who located the woman this week said she is now safe but due to be sent home on Monday. They told me the attacker, her employer, was taken into custody but reportedly released only a day later. It is a painful reminder of the ongoing shadow pandemic within the pandemic: domestic violence and emotional abuse.

Rights groups across the world warned in 2020 that cases of abuse in the home soared during coronavirus lockdowns, which piled emotional and financial pressure on households. This (although not exclusively) overwhelmingly impacted women (one in three women worldwide experience physical or sexual violence mostly from intimate partners, according to the UN). Domestic migrant workers in countries like Lebanon, who are trapped in the slave-like kafala sponsorship system and often living with their employers, found themselves on the searing frontline of that.