Lebanon’s Human Rights in focus

What does the rule of law look like when translated from principle into practice? This question sat at the heart of a dialogue seminar organized by the Ministry of Culture titled “The Rule of Law as a Daily Reality: Between Human Rights, Justice, Freedoms, and Accountability.” Held under the patronage of Minister of Culture Ghassan Salameh, and in the presence of Minister of Justice Adel Nassar, the discussion brought together legal experts, journalists, and human rights advocates to confront the gap between constitutional ideals and everyday realities in Lebanon.

Culture as a custodian of rights

Opening the discussion, Minister of Culture Ghassan Salameh positioned the role of his ministry beyond heritage and the arts, framing it instead as a guardian of values.

“This ministry's responsibilities also include spreading the ideas upon which human rights are based,” Salameh said, stressing the importance of engaging critically with the concept itself.
“And to also contribute, in an objective and effective manner, to reconsidering that concept so that it may become established in minds and absorb some of the criticisms directed at it over the past decades.”

His remarks underscored a central tension: human rights in Lebanon are often invoked rhetorically, yet rarely internalized structurally, neither within institutions nor within society at large.

Justice, pluralism, and the state’s fragile continuity

Minister of Justice Adel Nassar took a broader political and historical approach, arguing that Lebanon’s pluralistic fabric, often blamed for institutional paralysis, has also acted as a safeguard.

“Pluralism in Lebanon has contributed to creating an impenetrable barrier against totalitarian ideologies of all kinds,” Nassar said. “For despite the challenges and tremors, our republic has remained standing since independence until today.”

Yet the question remains whether survival alone is enough. As speakers later highlighted, resilience without reform risks normalizing dysfunction, especially when justice systems operate unevenly across communities.

One country, multiple legal realities

Nowhere was this fragmentation more evident than in the intervention of Attorney Leila Awada, co-founder of KAFA and head of its Domestic Violence Unit. Her contribution shifted the conversation from abstract principles to stark numbers.

“We at KAFA, in the year 2024, received 1,012 new women,” Awada said. “The five women present on the panel, each one has rights different from the other. Depending on her sect, depending on which court she stands before.”

The issue extends beyond women to children and families at large. “Our children's rights are different,” she added.

Awada highlighted the deadly consequences of this legal fragmentation: “In 2025, we have had 12 women killed. To this day, all sects do not recognize violence as a cause for divorce.” Her words laid bare a system where the right to safety is conditional, and where accountability stops at the doors of sectarian courts.

Between law and life

Throughout the discussion, a recurring theme emerged: Lebanon does not suffer from a lack of laws, but from a lack of equal application. Human rights exist on paper, justice exists in theory, and freedoms exist selectively, often filtered through sect, status, and power.

The seminar did not offer easy solutions. But it did something arguably more important: it named the contradictions, exposed the fractures, and insisted that the rule of law cannot remain a slogan. Because in Lebanon, the rule of law is a daily reality, or a daily absence, lived differently by each citizen.