The uncomfortable looks came first. As Jane Tiozen, a domestic worker from the Philippines, dipped her feet in the swimming pool of an upscale beach club in Lebanon, she could feel the disapproving eyes of guests on her.

That is when the lifeguard ordered the 33-year-old to exit the pool as ‘the help is not allowed to swim in it.’

Jane, who has worked as a nanny for a family in Beirut for eight years, told Metro: ‘I could sense something was off.

‘Then the lifeguard approached me and told me to get out of the pool. “You are not allowed to swim,” he said.

‘I was shocked. Everyone was staring at me. My whole body was shaking and I could feel that I was starting to cry.’

Incidents of racial and class-based segregation, like this one, are a window into Lebanon’s kafala system, considered

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