The Philippines issued an order last week barring its citizens from traveling to Kuwait to work as domestic workers.
The ban, which came into effect on Friday, is a direct response to the abuse and murder of domestic worker Jeanelyn Villavende at the hands of her employers in the Gulf state.
While announcing the ban, Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment Silvestre Bello said "skilled workers or Filipinos who are already in Kuwait for work" are exempt.
"This should serve as a clear message to Kuwaiti authorities. The partial ban may ripen into total deployment ban if justice for Jeanelyn Villavende is not met," he warned.
The Philippines Embassy in the Gulf nation said Villavende was brutally beaten and already dead when she was brought to Al Sabah hospital late last month. Nurses said the victim was "black and blue" and had sustained severe injuries.
Kuwaiti authorities have since arrested the woman's employers and interrogated them. During investigations, the deceased's sponsor admitted to police that his wife had beaten the domestic worker until she fainted. He took her to the hospital thinking she was unconscious and was "shocked to learn of her death."
The sponsor's wife was taken into custody and told police that she had beaten the worker "but did not intend to kill her." The exact date of Villavende's death remains unconfirmed as officials await the conduction of an autopsy to determine it.
Bello stressed that his country's government will be investigating the recruitment agency who facilitated the domestic worker's contract in Kuwait.
She arrived in the country in May 2019 and repeatedly reported violations of her rights to the hiring firm.
Back in September, the young woman asked to be repatriated to her country. She told agency workers that she was not being paid her salary in full and was also being mistreated and abused. However, her reports fell on deaf ears time and again.
Not the first case of its kind to lead to action in the Philippines
Villavende's tragic death comes after a series of similar murders that were reported in the Gulf nation over the past few years.
In 2018, a Kuwaiti criminal court sentenced an Arab couple to death by hanging over the murder of a Filipina domestic worker. The death sentence was issued in absentia during the first court hearing of the case.
It came a few months after the body of Joanna Demafelis, a 29-year-old domestic worker, was found in a freezer in the couple's Kuwaiti flat in February. At the time, it was reported that the worker's lifeless body had been in the flat for over a year.
Though the couple - later identified as a Lebanese man named Nader Essam Assaf and Syrian woman named Mouna Ali Hassoun - initially fled Kuwait, they were later arrested in Damascus, Syria. Hassoun was tried in her country and was found guilty of murder by a Syrian court back in September. Her husband was repatriated to Lebanon and is set to face trial there.
Demafelis' shocking death also led to action on part of her home country's government. Upon the reporting of her case, the Philippines suspended the deployment of Filipino workers to Kuwait but later eased the restrictions.
The latest statistics point out that Kuwait is home to around 216,200 Filipino workers who are mainly employed in the service industry or in domestic fields.
Last year, it was reported that around 27,000 Filipino workers left the Gulf Country in recent years. Their exit was partly triggered by reports on local domestic worker violence. It was also motivated by statements made by the President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, in which he asked nationals living in the Gulf state to leave it, citing the rise in cases of mistreatment against them.