BEIRUT, Nov 21 (IPS) - October and November have been bloody months for Lebanon's migrant domestic workers - over the last five weeks nine women have died. Most deaths have been reported as suicide.

The body of 20-year old Anget R. of Madagascar was found hanging from a rope at her employer's bedroom door Nov. 11. A newspaper in Madagascar reported the deaths of two other Malagasy women in October. One, identified only as Mampionona, was said to have fallen from the balcony of her employer's house. The other, identified as Vololona, died after reportedly jumping from the balcony.

Sunit Bholan of Nepal, who was 22, allegedly committed suicide Oct. 8. Ethiopian Kassaye Etsegenet, 23, died after reportedly jumping from the seventh floor of her employer's house Oct. 15. She left behind a suicide note citing personal reasons.

On Oct. 21, 26-year-old Zeditu Kebede Matente of Ethiopia was found dead, hanging from an olive tree. Two days later 30-year old Saneet Mariam also of Ethiopia died after allegedly falling from the balcony of her employer's house.

The list goes on: Nepalese national Mina Rokaya, 24, and then Tezeta Yalmoya of Ethiopia, 26 – who also died, it was said, when she fell from the balcony.

"It's a national tragedy," Nadim Houry, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, tells IPS.

On 16 September 2009, WIDE Austria, in cooperation with the Trade Union for Metal, Textiles and Nutrition, Women’s section (Bundesfrauenabsteilung der Gewerkschaft Metall-Textil-Nahrung, in short G-mtn frauen), arranged an evening around Women and Migration at the union’s comfortable fifth-floor lecture hall. The occasion for the evening event was the presentation of the latest issue of the magazine Solidarity among Women (Frauensolidaritaet no. 109), with the theme of initiatives against the financial crisis and poverty. Filomenita Mongaya Hoegsholm, a representative of the WIDE Danish platform, KULU, also presented her book at the event. Filomenita is a journalist and an editor who has focused her work on migration, gender and ethnic equality and multiculturalism; she has recently published and compiled the book In de olde worlde: views of Filipino migrants in Europe. It is the first comprehensive book on migration from the Philippines to the continent, published with support from UNESCO among others (the publication can be downloaded from www.unesco.org).

Daughters of globalisation

According to Ms. Mongaya Hoegsholm, in her talk entitled ‘Daughters of globalisation: Filipino women bridging the development gap’, the main push factor for Filipinas leaving the country in such huge numbers is poverty and its flipside: the lack of jobs or at least underemployment. In the Philippines, as in most Asian countries, the main focus is the family, and the main family value is education. In the case of the Philippines (which has a significant segment of its population in poverty in the rural areas), families still prioritise education, and without discriminating against girl children. But while the females in society educate themselves well (more women than men in the Philippines have PhDs), there are not enough possibilities in the job market, if at all. Therefore, the move from countryside to urban areas, thence from the overcrowded cities to leaving for abroad – even when accepting jobs not commensurate to their education – is a more and more common phenomenon, exemplified by au pairs in Europe.