Fajer Ahmed is every bit the business attorney when she talks about her firm and the  “corporate governance, fintech and employment issues” that she helps clients with. But what has made her the popular face that she is today in Kuwait is her work in the human rights arena – one that she accidentally stumbled upon.

“It just happened one day, when I was having breakfast with one of my friends, who also owns a popular blog, 248.am. He asked me about a simple legal query that one of his readers had,” she explains. “I was studying law at the time and I remembered the query being something I learnt in class, so I answered it for him.”

It was a start. Ahmed graduated the following year and soon found herself answering 20 to 30 emails a day, from basic legal queries to employment violations and other issues that people faced in Kuwait. The local English daily, Kuwait Times then called Ahmed, asking her to write a weekly legal column for the paper and she soon became the ‘English-speaking Kuwaiti lawyer’ for the expatriates living in the country.

Law for the helpless

It was a voice note that Ahmed received on Whatsapp one day, soon after she started her column that would be the beginning of a new reality in her life.

“I could not play the note at that point as I was in a meeting and did not have my headset either, so I asked them to type it out, but the person on the other end sent the voice note again,” she says. “I realised the possibility that it could probably be someone who could not read or write. When I listened to the note later on, it was from a domestic worker, who was illiterate and was being abused and said she needed help. We quickly got the authorities involved in her case to help her out.”

Ahmed shared the lady’s experience in her column and soon started getting calls and messages from others who needed help or were badly treated.

“Sometimes you hear stories and you think that it might happen just once in a while, but actually, it happens every day. You just don’t know what happens behind closed doors.”

Ahmed also points out that, in her experience, the ill treatment of domestic workers happened across different nationalities and many people were sometimes tricked or badly treated by their own countrymen.

“I once got an email from a lady from Ghana who was well educated and was told by her agent that she would be working in Kuwait as a sales manager. Instead she was forced to work as a domestic help and together with her two sisters was working as housemaids against their will. We helped them out, with the efforts of the officials and through them, there were around thirty people who were put up at the government shelter, which was a safe place for them.”

Making it sustainable

While Ahmed’s efforts saved lives, she is clear on her mission: “I really wanted to help so many people, but it got overwhelming at times, primarily because I had a business to run as well,” she says of the firm she set up and which currently has a team of four other attorneys working with her.

“I know many others who would love to help but can’t afford to. So, I don’t want to be inspiring as someone who helps people, rather I would want to be inspiring as someone who helps people by being sustainable as well,” she continues. “Initially, I did get a lot of clients, online and otherwise, and many of them could not or did not pay and it was a struggle to get people who could pay. But now things are simpler and people understand how I work. It is important that people understand that, much as I would want to do pro-bono work, I need to focus on my firm as well.”

When a multinational company forcefully kept several of its employees’ passports, prevented their transfer and withheld their indemnities, Ahmed told them that she could not work for them for free and since they were getting their salaries, would take a percentage from their indemnities which she felt “was helping them in a fair way.”

Ahmed also says that she has come across several incidents of false reports where people claim to be badly treated but were looking for an easy way out and so is cautious about every case she comes across.

Governmental efforts

“I always say this. I am blessed to be in a country which is so diverse socially and theoretically; the law is very supportive in human rights and causes but the laws need to be more accessible to people in the country in English, considering that expatriates form the majority here and there needs to be more awareness of the issues that happen in the country.”

But things have changed a lot, notes Ahmed, citing billboards put up in neighbourhood supermarkets advising people to treat their employees properly or risk being fined as well as Legal Aid help lines “which provides free legal services for people with salaries under KD150.”

Ahmed hopes that someday she can work with the government in providing emails as data that could help a bigger cause. She still continues to give pro-bono consultations once a week and while she tries to limit herself to five or six clients on that day, it is “always more than I can handle,” she laughs.

“I think I have learnt to not be emotionally attached, because you don’t know whom to believe. It’s not about having the heart. For me, it’s about being able to give back to the society, it is what I enjoy doing. It was not planned. It was accidental but now am going ahead with it.”