Opening a dialogue about Lebanon’s missing and disappeared :victims’ voices in postwar civil society -

Abstract

The fifteen-year Lebanese civil war left behind devastated buildings and a traumatized society. In the years following the war, much attention was paid to economic recovery and infrastructure reconstruction, but unfortunately, the human costs were largely ignored and the Lebanese government never seriously attempted to initiate a national dialogue on reconciliation. In a 1991 official estimate, the government reported that over 17,000 people went missing during the course of the war; many were victims of enforced disappearances. Some of the families have waited for over thirty years with still no answer about the whereabouts or fate of their loved ones. The pain of the unknowing is exacerbated by the government’s refusal to acknowledge the family members as victims to this crime and consequently, their right to know the truth. Family associations of the missing and disappeared represent one of the only organized social movements to address the legacies of the civil war. Thus, addressing the issue of the missing and disappeared is an ideal point of entry for dialogue on the civil war. In my thesis, I examine how the two main family associations, Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon (CFKDL) and Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE) have mobilized to encourage the inclusion of victims’ voices in Lebanon’s transitional agenda, and how international and local non-governmental organizations (I-NGOs) have aided in sustaining the social movement. In my thesis, I posit that the Lebanese government will not be able to lead a constructive dialogue on national reconciliation until space is created for victims to influence the transitional agenda. In order to examine the family associations’ mobilization and subsequent actions, I first look at what obstacles the movement has faced in the past. Second, I examine how the family associations frame victims’ narratives. Third, I study the resources that both the family associations and I-NGOs contrib