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Lebanon: a fate beyond its control? (Open Security)

Sep 2012
With violence in Syria making the headlines, Zahbia Yousuf and Marie-Joelle Zahar examine to what extent Lebanon can be responsible for its own fate, plus who's working to build peace, and how.

Reconciliation, reform and resilience: Positive peace for Lebanon (Accord 24) - English version

Jul 2012

Lebanon’s model of post-war power sharing and liberal economic growth has been widely praised. But it has failed to deliver for most Lebanese. Repeated outbreaks of political violence since the 1989 Taif Peace Agreement, and today fear of spillover from insecurity in Syria, show that a fundamentally different approach is needed to transform negative and precarious stability in Lebanon into positive and resilient peace.

Policy brief – Reconciliation, reform and resilience: Positive peace for Lebanon

Jul 2012
A fundamentally different approach is needed to transform precarious stability in Lebanon into durable peace. Repeated outbreaks of political violence since the 1989 Taif Peace Accord show that Lebanon’s model of power sharing and liberal economic growth, while widely praised, has in reality failed to deliver a noticeable peace dividend. This 6-page policy brief summarises the findings of Accord 24 and sets out 10 priorities for change.

Dealing with Lebanon's past: remembering, reconciliation, art and activism

Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience
Jul 2012
Sune Haugbølle reviews Lebanese efforts to pursue reconciliation and deal with the past. He explores issues of memory and remembering: Lebanon’s ‘state-sponsored amnesia’ over the war years; and the role of culture and of civil society in documenting and discussing them. Haugbolle considers options to integrate civil and national reconciliation initiatives and to involve political elites, as well as the potential of rural and traditional conflict resolution structures to engage grassroots in national reconciliation processes.

Box 1 - Documenting memories of war: UMAM and The Hangar

Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience
Jul 2012
Liliane Kfoury illustrates Lebanese civil initiatives for memorialisation by describing the Association for Documentation and Research (UMAM D & R), which gathers wartime testimonies of combatants, politicians, civilians, the displaced and relatives of missing people, in order to help preserve collective memory of the war.

Box 2 - War, peace and history in Lebanon: a conversation with Ahmad Beydoun

Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience
Jul 2012
In conversation with Accord, Ahmad Beydoun describes how the teaching of history is sectarian for many Lebanese. He stresses the importance of narrative diversity in recollecting experiences of the war, and the potential of a coordinated national educational curriculum to help accommodate and acknowledge different views as a means to improve understanding of the ‘other’.

Civil mobilisation and peace in Lebanon

Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience
Jul 2012
Civil mobilisation has had a mixed record as an agent for political change in Lebanon. Marie-Noëlle AbiYaghi reviews the history and impact of Lebanese civil activism from before the war until the present day. She focuses in particular on anti-sectarian demonstrations in Beirut in 2011, which not only exposed growing popular appetite for de-confessionalised politics, but also reinforced civil society’s susceptibility to political interests and interference.

Building bridges through interfaith dialogue: a conversation with Mohammad Sammak

Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience
Jul 2012
Religion is central to Lebanese politics and society. Mohammad Sammak reviews priorities and processes of interfaith dialogue to promote tolerance and reconciliation. He describes challenges related to the conflation of religion and politics, as well as the contribution of faith to peacebuilding, including the extent of its social reach: down to grassroots; out to peripheries; up to political elites; and across sectarian divides.

Displacement, return and reconciliation in Mount Lebanon

Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience
Jul 2012
Mass displacement during the war resulted in ‘confessional cleansing’ in many areas. Aïda Kanafani-Zahar looks at state returnee policy in the Mount Lebanon region, which claimed to prioritise reconciliation between Christian and Druze to prevent cyclical violence, but in fact has left little room for victims’ testimony or memories. Broader goals of ‘pacification’ and a communal rather than individual rationale have fuelled sectarianism and fed into national-level power struggles.

Conclusion: building peace and resilience for Lebanon

Positive peace for Lebanon: reconciliation, reform and resilience
Jul 2012
In their conclusion, Accord 24 co-editors Elizabeth Picard and Alexander Ramsbotham outline the progress needed to achieve durable peace in Lebanon. These include the need to tackle state-sponsored amnesia and sectarian narratives of the past; to meaningfully rebuild the social contract between state and society; to reinforce Lebanon's internal resilience in the face on external threats and intervention.

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