TOWARDS THE LAW

 

Incomplete Peace and the Double Standards of Justice:

 

In 1990, the official end of the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990) was declared following the Taif Agreement, which was approved by the Parliament on November 5, 1989. The families of those who went missing during the war were among the first to welcome the arrival of peace, believing that those stolen by the war would be returned by peace. Unfortunately, the proclaimed peace eluded them and did not address their cause.

This incomplete peace continued with the enactment of a general amnesty law*, which pardoned crimes committed between April 13, 1975, and March 28, 1990, except for crimes targeting political and religious leaders and ongoing or continuous crimes. In this way, the post-war authorities sought to evade responsibility for revealing the fate of the kidnapped and missing and marginalized their families. They adopted a policy of erasing any attempt to secure justice for thousands of victims and their loved ones. Justice in Lebanon thus became a matter of double standards: ensuring it for high-profile political and religious figures while denying it to thousands of ordinary citizens.

 

Rejecting the policy of enforced forgetting: (Silencing voices and letting bygones be bygones):

 

The policy of marginalization and disregard that was adopted toward the Committee of Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared failed to silence them; rather, it made their voices louder and their determination stronger, especially when some officials accused them of threatening civil peace by continuing to demand their right to know the fate of their loved ones. Officials urged the victims' families to forget their loved ones, let go of the past, and look forward instead—to focus on the reconstruction process. However, rebuilding what the war destroyed in stone without addressing the fate of the people meant abandoning the victims and their families and denying the past instead of confronting it and working to address its consequences in order to prevent repeating the same actions in the future.

A Law That Served as a Death Certificate Without Bodies:

 

In the face of the families' persistence in demanding their right to know the fate of their loved ones and their refusal to succumb to the policy of forgetting and drawing a curtain over what had happened—as if the war had never occurred—the authorities attempted to circumvent the issue to suppress it. They moved from ignoring the issue to directly confronting it by enacting, in 1995, the "Law on the Procedures for Proving the Death of Missing Persons"**.

The families rejected this blatant denial, as the law effectively called on them to abandon their missing loved ones, striking at the very core of human dignity. Instead of issuing a law that would establish a clear mechanism to trace the missing and uncover their fate, the authorities chose a deceptive approach—offering families a procedure to declare their loved one’s dead without any evidence proving it. Moreover, the law sought to fragment a humanitarian issue of national significance by reducing it to individual cases and redirecting each family to its own sect authority.

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*Law No. 84/91 of August 26, 1991

**Law No. 443 of May 15, 1995

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National Campaigns and Official Committees Without Power:

 

In the face of continued official disregard and people's preoccupation with their daily concerns, the Families' Committee felt it necessary to urge all segments of society to support this cause, considering it a national issue and the responsibility for resolving it not only rests with the families of the victims, but also with society as a whole. To this end, the Committee organized movements and activities, accompanied by the guidance of friends who volunteered to support the cause and adopted the Committee's demands. This step, which constituted a Friends' Framework for the Cause, was extremely important. This framework adopted the Families' Committee's three demands: the formation of an official committee to seriously investigate all kidnapped and disappeared persons and determine their fate; the adoption of a social welfare project for their families that would guarantee them a dignified life; and the declaration of April 13 of each year as a National Day of Remembrance and the erection of a memorial to the victims of the war. The Families' Committee also adopted the slogan "We Have the Right to Know." In late 1999, the Families' Committee and its Friends launched the "We Have the Right to Know" campaign. The campaign's first achievement was the formation of an official investigative committee in 2000. This achievement did not mean that the authorities had actually begun to respond; rather, it sought to confirm the validity of the law that had previously called for the families of the missing to account for their loved ones. The conclusion of the investigative committee's report was that it found no living missing persons, but rather mass graves scattered across Lebanese territory, without any evidence to substantiate this. Despite repeated demands, the alleged investigation file remained hidden and confidential under the pretext of preserving civil peace. The ongoing struggle, which intensified following the release of 59 individuals from Syrian prisons, prompted the executive authority to form a new committee (in 2001), followed by another (in 2005). Despite the extension of the mandates of each committee several times, no significant results have been issued regarding the fate of the missing either in Lebanon or Syria.

 

The Draft Law on Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons vs. the Draft Decree by the Minister of Justice:

 

In 2010, with the support from the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a delegation comprising two representatives of the families, two members of the Lebanese parliament, the lawyer of the families' committees, a media professional, and representatives from the Ministries of Justice, Interior, and Social Affairs visited Bosnia to learn about its experience in searching for missing persons. Following this visit, the Lebanese delegation agreed on the need to prepare a draft law to address the issue of missing and forcibly disappeared persons, as a focal point for the struggle to introduce it to Parliament and force its adoption.

The families' committee and Solid*** worked in collaboration with legal specialists and representatives of non-governmental organizations and international organizations to prepare the draft law on missing and forcibly disappeared persons.

In 2012, the International Center for Transitional Justice in Lebanon organized a public launch event for the draft law, attended by friends of the cause, representatives of supporting organizations, diplomats, parliamentarians, and media professionals. All attempts by the residents to bring the draft law to Parliament were met with repression and prevention. The suspicious official plan was complemented by the preparation of a draft decree to form a national body to replace the draft law. However, the families were able to thwart this official circumvention attempt, adhere to the draft law, and successfully introduced it into Parliament in 2014, following the issuance of two decisions by the State Shura Council**** in response to the review previously submitted by the Families' Committee and SOLIDE, represented by lawyer Nizar Saghieh. The resolution stipulated that a copy of the investigation file conducted by the official investigation committee in 2000 be provided to the residents without any exceptions, derogations, or restrictions.

 

Thus, the Families' Committee and SOLIDE's efforts grew, and the demand centered around the adoption of a law on the missing and forcibly disappeared. To this end, several national campaigns were organized starting in 2014: the "Visit Us" campaign, the "40^th Anniversary of the War" campaign, the "National Petition" campaign, the "List of the Missing in All of Lebanon" campaign, and the "August, the Month of the Missing in Lebanon" campaign.

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*** The Committee for the Support of Lebanese Detainees and Exiles in Syrian Prisons (SOLIDE) was founded and directed by the late Ghazi Aad

  **** State Shura Council Decision No: 420 - Date: 2014         

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Issuance of the Law on Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons:

 

After a long and tireless struggle by families and supporters of the cause (36 years), the Law of Missing and Forcibly Disappeared ***** 105/2018 was issued

This law represents a significant achievement for the families of the Kidnapped and forcibly disappeared, as it enshrines the right of every family to know the fate of their missing relative, whether alive or dead.

Under this law, an independent national commission****** was formed, tasked with tracing the missing and uncovering their fate. This law obliges all those with information related to missing persons to disclose it to the national commission, under penalty of criminal prosecution for failure to disclose it, providing false information to mislead the investigation, or tampering with mass graves. This means that this law will not hold permits of crimes in accordance with their past crimes, but rather for their present ones—that is, anyone who currently denies the families' right to know.

Law 105/2018 establishes mechanisms to redress the moral and material damage suffered by families and to achieve justice by restoring the rights of victims and their families. This paves the way for the closure of the war file through transitional justice. Uncovering the fate of missing persons within legal mechanisms leads to the restoration of collective memory and building it to highlight human suffering that transcends sectarianism and the narratives perpetuated by militias after the end of the war.

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***** The Lebanese Parliament passed the Law on the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared on November 12, 2018, and it was issued under No. 105 dated November 30, 2018.

****** The Independent National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared was established pursuant to Decree No. 6750 dated July 3, 2020, and its amendments.