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The story goes that some years ago, the wife of the Philippines' ambassador to Lebanon was swimming at a private beach club. The lifeguard on duty asked her to get out, saying domestic help were not allowed in the pool.

The ambassador's wife complied, probably too shocked to react.

Whether or not the story is accurate or was a joke does not really matter. It reflects a type of racism that is widespread in the Arab world, according to which anyone who is not white is bound to be a servant.

The situation varies among Arab countries, in some places worse than others. Everybody agrees that Filipinos are the best off while Bangladeshis usually get the worst treatment.

In most oil-rich Gulf countries, migrant workers are found in all sectors of the job market. Too rich to need to work themselves, Kuwaitis, Saudis, Qataris and others rely on migrant workers to run the daily business from restaurants to shops and taxis, and even some public sector jobs.

For some 825,000 Kuwaitis, there are 1.4 million foreign workers. Some 290,000 Filipinos went to the Middle East to work in 2000, making it the second leading destination for the 840,000 Filipinos who leave home each year.

Arab countries represent five of the top 10 host countries for Filipinos, including Saudi Arabia which is their No 1 destination.

Even less rich countries such as Lebanon and Jordan have thousands of guest workers. Lebanon has 55,000 registered migrant workers of which 6,000 are Filipinos, but the real figure is at least double that because of workers without legal papers.

Violence, verbal abuse

More than 90 percent of women migrant workers in non-Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) are in domestic work. Most of those countries have laws that give precedence to locals in employment -- and only jobs for which no locals are found can be given to foreigners.

Domestic work is shunned by all locals so it is handed over to Asians, who make up a good number of the migrant labourers.

Ray Jureidini, professor at the department of social and behavioral sciences of the American University in Beirut, says the working and living conditions of foreign domestic workers make them modern-day slaves.

In a study he did, Jureidini established that what characterises slavery historically applies to domestic workers in Lebanon and by extrapolation, to the rest of the Arab world. ''There is threat of violence against them, as well violence and verbal abuse, their movements are restricted and they are in exploited in their work," he says.

Verbal abuse and violence are common in households and can reach frightening proportions, such as beating, dragging by the hair and starvation, he adds.

Sex demands

Restrictions of movement often starts at the airport when the foreign worker's passport is taken away at passport control and handed over to her employer, who keeps it. Then there are restrictions on her outings, which are limited to one day per week, or even none at all.

"Maids are exploited most of the time. When I asked them what their job consisted of, their answer was 'everything', cleaning, cooking, looking after the children. They work up to 18, 20 hours a day, they don't have their own room to sleep in, they don't have a proper contract,'' says Jureidini.

He says that unlike the West where domestic workers, whether live-in or part-time, are hired to allow the women to find paid jobs outside the home, in the Arab world it is usually to make it easier for the women to pursue their social lives and activities.

Because of domestic workers' low status, there are also cases of sexual abuse, mostly in the Gulf. According to experts, domestic workers are very often viewed as the employer's property and should thus oblige his needs, whether it is cleaning or sexual satisfaction.

According to local traditions, women need to stay virgin until they marry. To satisfy their needs, employers' sons often taken it out on the domestic worker. Because local women are off bounds, there are also many brothel-like venues in what is known as 'bachelor houses' in Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia.

Meantime, Filipino women in Kuwait who get caught in prostitution rings, or opt for it because of the money, are usually considered high-class sex workers. One Kuwait man said they are highly prized because their skin color is lighter than other Asians, they are educated and speak English.

In Lebanon, there was a trend of massage parlours where Filipino women would provide massages and 'some extras', but many have been busted by the vice squad. Tales of working conditions in them were dire, to the extent that women risked their lives trying to escape, jumping out windows and car s.

In Lebanon, no laws forbid migrant workers to have a child, even outside wedlock. But while there are no deportations, it is very difficult to get a birth certificate and legalise the child's presence in the country.

Lack of protection

Many women come to the Afro Asian Migrant Worker Centre in Beirut when they get pregnant, either after they were raped or after a relationship with a boyfriend who left them.

At the centre, Sister Amelia from the Philippines welcomes them all but has a few conditions: no abortions, no selling of the baby and a pledge to take care of the child. When she receives a phone call from a girl who is being 'touched by Sir', her advice is to run away immediately, even without papers, and to come to the centre.

In countries where religious freedoms are protected, such as Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, the Catholic Church plays an important role in the life of overseas workers, mainly Filipinos, most of whom are Catholic.

But the lack of protection for domestic workers in the Arab world and the abuses this leads to, is actually a worldwide problem, since domestic work is part of the informal work sector and not recognised anywhere as a full-fledged paid job.

Experts see several reasons for this: Human rights records in the region are dire and labour laws are far from ideal for locals. For countries to consider improving the working conditions of foreign workers, they should first be convinced to improve the lives of their own people.

The above article was first written for the Inter-Press Service (IPS).