Victims of unpaid wages, false accusations, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, domestic slaves numbered two million in Madagascar in 2019. These new forms of slavery thrive on employment agencies and the complicity of certain local authorities.
‘Madagascar: l’Etat au secours des travailleuses malgaches expatriées au Koweït’ headlined Francetvinfo.fr; ‘Rapatriement du Koweït: Quarante-six femmes rentrent traumatisées’ for l’Express de Madagascar. On 1 April 2019: the repatriation of 46 domestic workers made the headlines in all the media, radio, television and the local and foreign press. This return to the country was a great relief for everyone: the workers, who were able to be reunited with their families, the government, which had come under pressure from public opinion, and … the general public. According to the press, these domestic workers had been ill-treated, abused and exploited, condemned to modern-day slavery 5,343 kilometres from home. This is not to criticise the efforts of the state, which organised everything to enable these women to return home, and even less to minimise what happened to them in the Persian Gulf. But you don’t have to go that far to Asia to find this form of slavery.
Malala, 16, from Alakamisin’Ambohimanarina, has been there. Born into a poor family, this teenager was barely 15 when she decided to leave her parents’ home in search of work. With hunger in her stomach, she got a job as a domestic worker with a wealthier family living not far from her small town. ‘According to our initial agreement, all I had to do was look after the bosses’ children, take care of them a little, take them back to school and all that for a monthly pay of 50,000 Ariary’. The situation quickly deteriorated. ”I was really excited about the job, but after just two days, I went from being a nanny to a handyman… I had to do even more than the day before. Everything, I had to do everything around the house. I’d get up around 4 or 5 in the morning to light a coal fire, cook the family’s breakfast and make hot water for their shower. I also had to take the children back to school. When I got home I’d do the housework, the cooking, the washing… I’d work non-stop for hours on end. On a good day, I could go to bed around 7pm, but on the other days, I had to wait until 9pm and the return of my bosses before I could finally lie down on my bed on the floor. That’s a total of 16 hours’ work a day.
But despite the sheer volume of work, and the impossible conditions, after five months she never received her pay. “My bosses were always saying that they didn’t have enough money to pay me. They always found excuses not to pay me. In the end, I decided to quit the job. Disappointed by this first unsuccessful experience and exhausted by five months of unpaid work, she was getting ready to turn the page and sincerely thought that the story would end there. But fate was still against her.
“Before leaving, I asked them to pay me my full salary or give me what they could, and they told me to come back a few days later, but I was really surprised when, instead of paying me as agreed, they called the police to arrest me on the pretext that I had stolen one of their phones before leaving their house. When she arrived at the Ambohimanarina gendarmerie station, she was subjected to tough questioning: “I insisted that I was innocent, but they wouldn’t listen, and even beat me up to make me confess. One of the gendarmes told me that if I confessed everything would be fine. Despite the fact that I had never stolen anything, I ended up saying that I had done what they were accusing me of in the hope that the torture would stop. They beat me up and punched me”.
Held at the gendarmerie station for three days without food, Malala was tried on the Saturday following her arrest and convicted of theft. She is still serving her sentence in a social rehabilitation centre.
A similar case for Angeline, 17, from Manakoana, Ambositra. Aged just 11 at the time, this child had been uprooted from her parents’ home by her own sister and had to work as a domestic for board and lodging for five long years. “During those five years, I did all sorts of chores for my sister and only received one meal a day in return. Cleaning, washing, cooking…”. Worse still, she was mistreated and reduced to the status of a slave. ”Every day I was beaten by my sister or her husband. They had an electric wire that was only used to whip me. Any excuse was good for beating me, something I didn’t do properly, something I forgot to do, something wrong that their children did and for which I was held responsible… When my sister’s husband was drunk, he would punch me in the face for no reason.” Even today, the mere mention of this period in her life sends Angeline into a tizzy: “No human being could stand the treatment they inflicted on me. I can’t even count the days when I went to sleep crying, still sore from the blows I received. It lasted five years! And like Malala, the first victim, Angeline was accused by her sister’s husband of stealing a computer. She was also sentenced by a court to a few years in a social rehabilitation centre.
Child slaves: trivialised crime or collective denial
Nearly five million children work as domestic servants in Madagascar, 39% of whom, like Malala, do so as a profession, according to a report by the Union of Professionals with a Diploma in Social Work (SPDTS). That’s around 1,950,000 children enrolled as domestic workers.
A phenomenon that has become commonplace and even commonplace, a large proportion of households living in Madagascar’s major cities have long used the services of a ‘mpanampy’ or domestic worker, often a minor. In most cases, they come from poor families living in rural areas of the Big Island. Working for their employers, they carry out the most thankless tasks in the home for a modest sum of money. To a lesser extent, this phenomenon also affects young boys.
While indoor tasks such as cleaning, cooking and washing are often assigned to young girls, outdoor jobs such as gardening, babysitting or washing employers’ vehicles are assigned to boys. This is in fact a reproduction of the division of labour between girls and boys in their own homes, in their parents’ homes, leading the latter to think that their daughters are doing everyday work by becoming domestic servants, but in return for something in return for the parents. Yes, because generally, the child employed as a domestic worker does not receive his or her salary directly, as it is paid directly to the parents. Children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are also sent by their parents in order to reduce the family’s burdens. In other words, to reduce the number of mouths to feed. Finally, in many cases, children are sent by their own parents in return for a service rendered to them, whether in cash or in kind, the exact term being civil debt bondage.
However, the exploitation of domestic labour, particularly when minors are involved, and servitude for civil debt are considered to be forms of human trafficking and are prohibited by the laws in force in Madagascar, in particular Law no. 2014-040 on the fight against human trafficking.
According to this law, art 6, “The recruitment, transport, transfer, accommodation or reception of a person, by the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, by abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of authority or of a situation of vulnerability, or by the offer or acceptance of payments or benefits to obtain the consent of a person or of a person having authority over another, for the purposes of exploiting the domestic labour of others, will be punishable by 2 to 5 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 1. 000,000 Ar to 10,000,000 Ar.
Child slaves: using poverty to justify the sale of one’s own children
And despite this provision, whether deliberately ignored or not, parents do not hesitate to send their children to work, and are even relieved when they are hired as domestic workers by a family whose financial situation is more favourable. As Mirasoa, a mother of five from the south of the island, explains.
“I voluntarily sent one of my daughters to work in Antananarivo because of the poverty in our region. Neither she nor I were happy when she was still here. It was impossible for both of us to stay. I gave her the chance to provide for herself and her mother, as I did for my mother in the past. It’s a simple return of the favour… we didn’t have the funds to start our lives properly, but it was necessary…”.
This is not an isolated case; it is mainly poverty that pushes parents to send their children to work as domestic servants. For example, according to the baseline study on child domestic labour carried out by the International Labour Office (ILO), in the Amoron’i Mania region, the heads of households who send children into domestic service work mainly in the agricultural sector (69.5%). Except in the case of large farms, this sector does not even allow these families to be self-sufficient. It is this same poverty that justifies and excuses to the State parents who condemn their children to a life of servitude. And yet, resources have been mobilised to combat or, in the worst cases, reduce the scale of this phenomenon.
Inefficiency or complicity?
For this year 2019, and in addition to external funding as part of the fight against the worst forms of child labour, the budget allocated to the Directorate of Labour and Promotion of Fundamental Rights within the Ministry of Labour is 153,880,000 Ariary. Other departments in other ministries have also been assigned the task of combating child labour and human trafficking. In 2017, according to a study carried out by UNICEF, the government increased the number of child labour inspectors from 4 to 15 to assess the violence and exploitation of children in Madagascar. In 2016, the National Police Vice and Minors Brigade (PMPM) had a headquarters and 15 regional units throughout Madagascar, employing a total of 118 officers. Also in 2017, the gendarmerie inaugurated a child and vice protection service (SPEM).
According to an article in the daily Midi Madagasikara dated 16 September 2017: “With a view to improving the effectiveness of this service, capacity-building activities for elements of the national gendarmerie have been carried out. Since 2013, 350 senior officers and gendarmes from different regions of the Big Island have strengthened their knowledge of children’s rights, laws and procedures applicable to children, on reception and listening and hearing techniques adapted to children during the investigation procedure, whether they are victims or alleged offenders, requiring judicial protection due to their situation.”
Both in theory and in practice, it is up to the prosecution to provide evidence as to the guilt of the accused, and not up to the accused to prove his innocence. But this logical order is not always respected. This is nothing new. Hanta Randrianarimalala, Director of Akany Avoko Faravohitra: “It’s a real modus operandi for employers: once they’ve had enough of their domestics, they’re falsely accused of theft or some other offence and then convicted for acts they never committed. A way for employers to get rid of them for good…”.
The fact that the police or other gendarmes side with the plaintiffs, as was unfortunately the case for Malala and Angeline, doesn’t help matters. And this could be explained in two ways. The first being that ‘domestic workers are miserable people, so it’s not surprising that he stole something’. And the second being: “domestic workers are poor, there’s nothing to expect from them. In the first case, it’s a terrible prejudice; in the second, it’s favouritism. In both cases, it’s serious professional misconduct for a policeman, judge or gendarme, especially when children’s futures are at stake.
Sexual assault
When it comes to abuse, sexual assault is another recurring problem. It is not uncommon for domestic workers to be abused by their employers. But in most cases, the facts are kept under wraps. On the rare occasions when they do come to light, it is thanks to the intervention of a third party, often a neighbour, that the abused domestic workers are rescued and the employers denounced.
Telina Rakotonarivo, a social worker at the Vonjy Centre of the Befelatanana University Gynaecology and Obstetrics Hospital, recounts the case of a 12-year-old girl who was rescued and admitted to hospital, but unfortunately too late: “The girl in question had been taken on as a domestic for a family in the capital. In addition to the hard work she had to do on a daily basis, in the evenings she had to satisfy all the sexual needs of the father of the family, who came home drunk most of the time. And all this in front of his wife, because the house consisted of a single, narrow living room with a mattress, dining table, television set, etc. Jealous, the wife took revenge on the little girl every morning when the husband went to work, beating her with a whip and inflicting other forms of physical and moral torture on her.
After a while, the maid became pregnant, which only made the employer couple, and in particular the wife, even more bitter towards the 12-year-old girl. This inhuman treatment only stopped when a neighbour saw the little girl already pregnant and courageously decided to organise her escape as soon as possible. The little girl was then admitted to the Centre Vonjy de Befelatanana for hospitalisation. The employers were arrested.
According to data obtained from the Vonjy Centre in Befelatanana, 12 cases of sexual abuse and rape of domestic workers were recorded in 2018. However, this figure falls far short of the reality, as few victims dare or are able to lodge a complaint.
Moreover, in general, sexual crimes are rarely condemned by the legal authorities in Madagascar. In fact, according to statistics obtained from the Division of the Police of Morals and Protection of Minors (DPMPM), of cases of sexual abuse of minors such as indecent assault, incitement of minors to debauchery, sexual harassment, incest, procuring, attempted rape, rape and paedophilia, 108 people who were implicated were granted provisional release. Despite all this, the phenomenon of child domestic labour is not about to go away, quite the contrary, in a country where poverty is gaining ground.
A business worth billions Even more worrying, for some years now, recruitment and placement agencies have been turning this phenomenon into a real business. By asking people who used to employ children as domestic servants, and by searching on a public Facebook page for requests and offers of work as a domestic servant in Madagascar, we know that currently, the average monthly salary offered to under-age domestic servants is around 50,000 Ariary. If we multiply this figure by the estimated number of children involved in domestic work, 1,950,000, we can conclude that this is a market worth around 1,170,000,000,000 ariary annually (50,000 Ar * 1,950,000 children * 12 months). This largely explains the creation and proliferation of these placement agencies since 2009. It’s a great booty to share.
Around fifteen cases a week. According to Votresalaire.org/Madagascar, a job-sharing website connected to the WageIndicator international network, this is the average number of applications received by employment agencies from jobseekers looking for work as a domestic or household helper. Setting up and running a private employment agency is not in itself prohibited, but is nevertheless subject to strict legislation in Madagascar, in particular the Labour Code (article 247 – 250) and Decree no. 2005/396 setting out the conditions and procedures for operating private employment agencies and the procedures for granting and withdrawing approval.
The following articles are of particular interest:
Apathetic Labor Inspection
It is important to note that domestic worker placement agencies and those involved in sending female workers abroad operate under different legal statuses. As of 2015, only four private agencies had received official authorization from the Ministry of Labor to deploy domestic workers overseas. The number of local private placement agencies remains unknown, as no data is available from the ministry—an omission that already reflects a certain level of negligence.
After just two days of investigation, we were able to establish contact with one such placement agency. The representative we spoke with claimed the agency was legally registered. According to existing legislation, this implies that the agency has received official accreditation from the Ministry of Labor. However, due to the agency’s failure to provide a tax identification number, a statistical registration code, or any other document attesting to its legal existence, we were unable to verify these claims. Moreover, it was impossible to trace the agency in the commercial registry using only its business name.
Posing as potential clients, we contacted the agency by phone and asked whether it could place a minor girl in our household as a domestic worker. The initial response was a firm no—likely out of caution. However, a few hours later, we received an email from the same representative, openly offering to place two minor girls, sisters, in our home—for the price of just one domestic worker’s salary. In the days that followed, the agency’s representative persistently encouraged us to hire the two minors. Beyond the salary, we were also expected to pay an agency fee equivalent to one month’s wage for the worker. This pricing model was consistent across all the agencies we contacted.
With only a phone and a bit of initiative, we were able to confirm that these agencies do indeed place minors in domestic service roles. This practice is a criminal offense and should, in theory, be sufficient grounds for the Ministry of Labor to revoke an agency’s license. Yet, the Ministry of Labor and the labor inspection services have never shut down a single local placement agency, nor have they taken any administrative action—such as withdrawing accreditation. On the contrary, these agencies continue to thrive, with little to no oversight. This strongly suggests that combating child labor—in this form, at least—is not a priority for the state, and particularly not for the Ministry of Labor.
Double Standards and Persistent Silences
The national policy appears to be markedly different when it comes to private agencies involved in sending domestic workers abroad, particularly to so-called “high-risk” countries in the Gulf. Crackdowns are not uncommon. For example, on February 9, 2019, a Saudi national was imprisoned for human trafficking. According to L’Express de Madagascar, he was found with 14 medical certificates bearing the photographs of the migrant women and five Malagasy passports in his possession.
In another case reported by newsmada.com on May 15, 2019, police from the Central Department of Specialized Investigations intercepted a woman in her thirties at the port of Mahajanga, where she was attempting to send Malagasy domestic workers to Saudi Arabia. More recently, the President of the Republic made the repatriation of dozens of Malagasy domestic workers from Kuwait and other Gulf countries a national priority. He publicly condemned the unacceptable nature of this situation in front of television cameras.
Half-Truths and a Lack of Political Will
Despite public statements, the government has never fully committed to eradicating child labor and human trafficking. This is clearly outlined in the latest report from the U.S. Embassy in Madagascar: “The government did not increase its efforts compared to the previous reporting period. Despite persistent reports alleging public official complicity throughout the year, no officials were held accountable, and no investigations were launched into these allegations of state-facilitated child sexual exploitation… For the second consecutive year, the government allocated no budget to the National Office for the Fight Against Human Trafficking, which severely limited its ability to coordinate nationwide efforts, raise public awareness, and implement the national action plan.”
