Country Context
LEBANON
Lebanon is in the midst of a series of cascading crises that encompass the economy, security, governance and the justice and education sectors. These include the aftermath of the August 4, 2020, explosion at the Port of Beirut, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, financial collapse, internal political unrest and ongoing human rights abuses. Lebanon additionally hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world, including 1.5 million Syrians, who struggle to access medical, psychosocial and social welfare services. Faced with a weak state and a paralyzed government, CSOs bear the brunt of meeting local basic needs.
In the justice sector, these recent challenges build on the historic failure of successive Lebanese governments to address the legacy of the 1975–1990 civil war.
In Lebanon, there is collective amnesia about the country’s violent past. “No victory, no vanquished”—the state’s catchphrase—became the official explanation for the transition to peace from a civil war that left more than 200,000 people dead and 17,000 missing.[i] The Document of National Accord (or Ta’if Agreement) sought to turn the page on the war but denied any form of acknowledgment for the victims of political violence and armed conflict who were forced to accept a post-war political parity with their aggressors.[ii] Moreover, amnesty laws were quickly put in place, closing any domestic avenue to truth and justice.
Lebanon’s post-war period has lasted since 1989 and included the 1991 Amnesty Law, state-enforced amnesia and an ongoing lack of accountability for all political and economic crimes. The state has chosen to surrender the pursuit of truth, institutional reform and reconciliation for the sake of stability, but it has not been able to deliver on that either. As a result, Lebanon is coping in spite of its history, rather than moving past it.
Memory
The Lebanese government’s policies of official amnesia have persisted for decades, covering everything from the civil war to the explosion at the Port of Beirut. Collective amnesia persists in everything from failing to produce reliable casualty numbers to systematically demolishing sites of significant events. This means that groups engaging in memory work must often explain the past before individuals and communities can consider memorialization or remembrance events.
Several organizations work specifically to collect and preserve written documents and other forms of memory. UMAM Documentation & Research is an institution that holds an extensive public archive of historical documents, books, films, magazines, newspapers and other material and organizes a series of memorialization events related to the civil war.[i] The Forum for Memory and Future provides conversation spaces for experts, decision-makers and the general public to revisit the impact of conflict and memories as a methodology to avoid recurrence.[ii]
There are still no reliable numbers from the civil war as to the dead, missing, forcibly disappeared or injured; many events are still “disputed, selectively narrated and interpreted in a non-inclusive manner.”[iii] Despite this lack of official recognition, civil society groups and survivor communities organize their own memorials. In January 2023, ACT for the Disappeared collaborated with FAFG to install two benches in Horsh Beirut park dedicated to the missing and forcibly disappeared in Lebanon, which were designed and painted by their families. One bench was painted with messages calling on the community to support their cause, and the other bench reflected the missing people’s personalities and the families’ memories of them.[iv] Similarly, Families of the Kidnapped and Missing in Lebanon embroidered a mural with the names of their missing loved ones in April 2022, the 47th anniversary of the beginning of the civil war.[v]
Local and international CSOs have also promoted memorialization initiatives through cultural exhibitions, theatrical performances, films and art production.[vi] They also hold remembrance events at times of significance, such as the Day of the Lebanese Civil War commemoration that Offrejoie (Farah Al-Ataa’) organizes each April 13 in front of the National Museum in Beirut.[vii] Meanwhile, civil society groups and survivors of the port explosion have called for the grain silos, which absorbed the brunt of the blast, to be preserved as a memorial rather than being demolished in what has become standard practice for the Lebanese government in erasing the physical markers of traumatic events.[viii]
Justice
Impunity is the primary characteristic of Lebanon’s response to past atrocities. Following the signing of the Ta’if Accord that ended the civil war, the parliament adopted the General Amnesty Law to pardon all political crimes committed before March 28, 1991. The law provides impunity for all crimes committed against ordinary citizens by any militia or armed group during the civil war, but notably does not cover “crimes of the assassination or attempted assassination of religious figures, political leaders and foreign or Arab diplomats.”[i]
After years of public pressure, Parliament adopted the Law on Missing and Disappeared Persons (Law 105) in 2018. Among other provisions, Law 105 established the National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared as “the primary institution responsible for coordinating an effective and meaningful response to the need of families to learn the truth about their missing relatives.”[ii] The members of the Commission were appointed in mid-2020 and have done some preliminary organization work, but little more has happened since due to insufficient resources and a lack of independence.[iii]
In addition to seeking justice for the victims of Lebanon’s civil war, civil society and survivors’ groups are also calling for accountability for the 2020 port explosion. They have organized rallies and protests, held monthly vigils and even carried coffins outside the home of the acting minister of the Interior.[iv] The government launched an investigation shortly after the blast, at which time then-President Michel Aoun promised that anyone found to have responsibility would suffer consequences—but impunity has so far prevailed.[v] The first lead investigator was removed after he said that he’d planned to charge four former senior government officials, including Hassan Diab, the prime minister at the time of the explosion. The second lead investigator, Judge Tarek Bitar, was prevented from questioning members of Parliament and security agency personnel because they have governmental immunity. When asked to lift their immunity, Parliament refused and Bitar’s investigation was suspended.[vi] Bitar announced in January 2023 that he was charging Diab and the heads of two security agencies, but the public prosecutor’s office has said he does not have the authority to bring charges due to the suspended status of his investigation.[vii]
Education
The history of Lebanon is mostly unknown to today’s youth, unless they learn about it from ad hoc initiatives or politically motivated sources.[i] Students are not formally educated about events that shaped their country and the official history curriculum was last updated in the early 1970s.[ii] Several attempts to reform the history curriculum by successive governments have failed.[iii] The educational challenges are further complicated by the absence of official state processes designed to address the past through the legal system, public truth-telling and reformation.
Numerous unofficial projects have tried to fill the hole left by the lack of an official curriculum on the history of the civil war. Partnerships between Lebanese universities and local and international non-governmental organizations have produced several small-scale initiatives to promote historical discourse oral history, coping with the past and truth-seeking initiatives. For example, the Legal Clinic for Human Rights at Sagesse University created a virtual class in April 2022 on “Dealing with the Past: Missing and Forcibly Disappeared” to fill the cultural-historical void for younger generations.[iv] The Lebanese Association for History is working to train public school teachers on incorporating oral histories in their curricula.[v]
Some initiatives seek to both educate youth about their history and give them pathways to advocate for justice and memory. The UNOHCHR Regional Office of the Middle East and North Africa (ROMENA) has partnered with nine Lebanese universities on the “Dealing with the Past: Memory for the Future” project to educate youth about the history of Lebanon, increase their capacity to engage in transitional justice advocacy and establish Human Rights Clubs.[vi] Similarly, the Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared has collaborated with International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) to digitize its archive and run transitional justice and oral history workshops.[vii] Several of the participants in this project have gone on to work with civil society groups doing awareness raising about the 2018 Law on Missing and Disappeared Persons.
Recommendations
The Lebanese government should support community-led efforts to collect written and oral histories of both the civil war and subsequent atrocities, such as the Beirut port explosion, including by providing a physical or virtual space for those histories to be preserved.
Both the government of Lebanon and the international community should ensure that the National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared has the resources and institutional support necessary to fulfill its mandate.
Groups working to build a truthful, multi-perspective narrative of Lebanon’s recent history should engage Lebanese youth not only by educating them but also by empowering them to construct their own written and oral histories and equipping them to advocate for the future they envision.
Notes
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