Via the Business and Human Rights Centre

Chloe Bercovitz

Managing Editor

Any name in this article is a pseudonym. The stories of Moira, Priya, and Amara are drawn from reporting by freelance foreign correspondent Rachel Hagan of More To Her Story.

Once the bombing rattles her dimly lit bedroom, she thinks of her baby’s cries. Moira, 29, lies alone in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, unable to return to her family back in Ghana. Unable to speak to her family, her phone, along with her passport, was stolen by her employer. The precious objects being pried from her hands, fighting back led to a beating.

There are over 65 million female migrant workers, according to the ILO. Many of whom have succumbed to regions of conflict, with no way home. Iraq hosts over one million of them, as per 964 Media data.

Iraq has found itself in a unique position, being the sole country struck by both sides of the current conflict. Now, over nine weeks in, the nation remains caught between American and Iranian rockets alike.

While Iran and the United States trade strikes across Iraqi airspace, Moira’s employer keeps hold of her documents. 

Millions of women flee their families, raise strangers’ children, cook, clean – in order to send home the very remittances that ensure their family’s survival.

“I came here leaving my country, my home, my family. I left them behind to work. Now I stay here to earn money for them. But my boss started beating me. They hit my stomach, and then they locked me in the small room, and they started beating me more,”

told Moira in conversation with More to Her Story.

Not all endure physical abuses. However, with long hours and the deprivation of their passports, these conditions, despite their legality, culminate in such an utter loss of freedom that it becomes difficult to return home at all.

Priya, 22, who arrived from Nepal just shy of a year ago, had never heard gunshots until recently. She did not know what she heard. Priya has never had a day off, earning $300 a month while residing just outside of the airport. In close enough proximity for her windows to rattle. 

Priya misses her mother.

“At home, there is no one who works except me. My mother is ill. Because of that, no one gave me work in Nepal. That’s why I came to this country,” she cried. She cannot remain in touch with her, for she is always at work.

Even with an expired visa, Priya has no way of returning to her mother. Her employer keeps her working. She cannot afford legal aid. She cannot afford to go home.

Many migrant women entering Iraq came from informal recruitment networks, many of such being Facebook groups that are only recently being investigated. Talk amongst these groups normalizes abuse; employers mock women and share their exploitative practices. A woman was called “spoiled” for requesting shampoo.

The same Facebook group uncovered a post in which an Ethiopian woman, described as “lively and obedient, [who] wears makeup,” was bought for $6,000 and “resold” for $4,000, according to the Business and Human Rights Centre.  

This dialogue fosters an unsettling pipeline – a dialogue filled with diction of ownership. This pipeline has brought women, namely from the poorest African countries, into a system that treats them as commodities. 

The question, then, of whether such practices could be legal remains rather convoluted. Passport confiscation is technically prohibited under Iraqi law. However, state bodies, as well as recruitment agencies, remain exceptions. This is what holds so many women in place: their ability to flee warfare lies with the very institutions that capitalize off of them.

And, compounding the legal entrapment just illustrated, these women are further stripped of any means to defend their rights; the Iraqi government forbids unions.

Amidst a period of unrest, migrant workers have been, and continue to be, disproportionally harmed. According to The Human Rights Watch, Filipino and Nepali workers were taken hostage by Hamas. Thai farm workers were among the largest group of foreign victims killed in Gaza.

Killed, displaced, or taken hostage – isolated from their families and stripped of their documentation, millions of these women across warzones have been left alone to navigate such challenges.

However, a recent diplomatic development provides a faint, urgent lifeline for those currently stranded. Given the closure of Iraqi airspace, a new agreement was signed in March: temporary visas, which are processed within a week, allow for workers to travel from Iraq to Türkiye. This solution may be a window of escape for many of those who have spent months praying for a way to return to the arms of their families.

“I said, God, please help me. I didn’t come here to die,” says Amara, 27. Having come to Iraq from Ghana, she had never heard a bomb before, and misses her six-year-old boy more than anything else in the world.