News

The Human Rights Protection Association HRPA honored last week women activist Inaam Muqaddam in appreciation and recognition of her benevolent social and educational accomplishments. The event was held in the presence of Linda Matar, former President of the League for Lebanese Women’s Rights, as well as representatives of women associations in Lebanon. (Al Diyar, May 23, 2016)

 

In collaboration with the Federation of Municipalities of Bint Jbeil, Jihad Al Binaa Development Association- South Directorate held last week three vocational training workshops on confectionary making and chocolate decoration in the towns of Bara3asheet, A3inata and Kooneen and two courses on the manufacture of dairy products in Hadatha and Yaroon, and as part of its accelerated vocational training project. Some 117 women participated in the chocolate sweets and pastries training courses which included theoretical and applied sessions. (Al Diyar, May 21, 2016)

 

The Euromed Feminist Initiative- EFE-EFI organized a roundtable yesterday under the banner ‘Ministerial conclusions of the Union for the Mediterranean on the social role of women in promoting gender equality strategies and policies: Priorities and prospects in Lebanon’. The event was organised as part of the EU-funded ‘Regional Gender Platform’ project. Participants included key stakeholders involved in furthering national cooperation and strengthening political dialogue between civil society and government officials with the aim to promote the rights of women and gender equality. Discussions focused on UfM Ministerial Conclusions (Paris 2013) in order to develop recommendations in preparation for the 4th UfM Ministerial Conference on the Rights of Women scheduled for February 2017. On the occasion, the EU Representative in Lebanon underlined the importance of women’s participation in decision making, pointing out to available prospects that could motivate women to venture into the political life. (Al Mustaqbal, May 20, 2016)

 

In collaboration with the Beirut Bar Association, Kafa, Enough Violence, ‎organization held a seminar yesterday at the House of the Lawyer in Beirut in the ‎presence of a number of ambassadors, judges and concerned activists. On the ‎occasion, the Single Judge in Jeb Jabnin, Beqaa, Fadi Aridi, brought to mind ‎challenges impeding the enforcement of the Law on Human Trafficking in ‎Lebanon No. 164/2011. Likewise, the officer for  the Anti-Trafficking and ‎Exploitation of Women Unit at Kafa, Ghada Jabbur, tackled prostitution facts in ‎the country, like for example, the interrelation between human trafficking and ‎prostitution, the role of the sex buyer and points of disagreement between the ‎three mainstream analogies involving prostitution (interdictive, regulatory, and ‎obliterative). For his part, the executive director of the Global Alliance Against ‎Trafficking in Women, Gregoire Terry, outlined the new French legislation that ‎fights prostitution, supports victims and penalizes both sex dealers and buyers. ‎‎ Recommendations were issued at the end of the seminar which called for the ‎following: 1) readdress any legislative or regulatory texts that could be ‎misinterpreted to sanction the act of exploitation or trafficking in persons, or that ‎could support sex traders in court in terms of  corroborating the legality of their ‎action, 2) amendment of the law of human trafficking and exemption of the ‎victim from the toil of proving they are victims, 3) modification of all human ‎trafficking related laws while annexing them to the above Law No. 164, with ‎emphasis on decriminalizing the victims and ensuring their protection, in addition ‎to removing the term ‘Force’ mentioned under the definition of exploitation, 4) ‎penalizing the sex buyer (customer) in order to check his role in sustaining ‎prostitution and human trafficking. (Al Mustaqbal, Al Akhbar, May 20, 2016)‎

 

The civil and secular group, “Citizens Within a State”, continues its bold municipal elections campaign with the aim to break the hegemony of confessional/sectarian leaders and in order to build a civil, democratic, just and capable state. The civil movement announced its 11 new nominees (including 4 women) for the South and Nabatiyeh elections planned for the forthcoming Sunday. The names of the candidates are as follows: Six candidates (including two women) in Tyre namely: Lara Qassem, Dunia Halawi, Hussein Fares, Haidar Fares, Mohamd Saris and Amer Halawi; two candidates (including one woman) in Meys Al Jabal (Ali Nassredine and Zainab Khanafer); Mohamed Walid Assi in Saida; Yussef Tafesh in Nabatieh and Fadia Bazzi in Bint Jbeil. It should be noted that the Citizens group previously nominated 13 persons, among them 8 women, to run in Beirut, Beqaa and Mount Lebanon, two women one from Kfarzebian (Mount Lebanon) and the other from Saghbeen (Beqaa) were successful. The names of all candidates are the following:

- Mount Lebanon: 3 nominees (2 women) distributed as follows: Jalal Khoury in Jounyeh, Claude Burji in Jbeil Byblos and Josephine Zgheib in Kfarzebian.

- Beqaa: 6 nominees (including 5 women) distributed on follows: Hadeel Rifai, Yumna Tofaili and Mirvat Wahbi in Baalbaq; Elisaar Sama7ha in Zahleh, Nasri Sayegh in Mashghara and Ghada Ghanem in Saghbeen.

‎- Beirut: 4 nominees (including 1 women), Charbel Nahas, Ghada Elyafi, George Sfeir, ‎Yasser Sarout.‎

 

Starbucks recently concluded its ‘Opportunity Café’ initiative launched in collaboration with Bayt.com and Education for Employment (EFE) foundation. This initiative is believed to be the largest professional training workshop on CV writing across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). As part of the Global Month of Service which takes place on April of each year, the workshop was held last April 18 at 29 Starbucks stores across 10 MENA countries with a wide participation of  35 professional trainers and 177 Starbucks partners (employees). The Opportunity Café trained 900 young men and women between the ages of 16 and 35, notwithstanding their academic background. The initiative provided training sessions to the region’s youth, in addition to strategic career advice from committed experts. The purpose of the initiative was to help those aspiring young people to realize their professional dreams through building the skills required during hiring interviews, and therefore enhance the chances of their employment.  (Al Mustaqbal, May 19, 2016)

 

Lebanon ranked 115 among 218 world countries and 14 among 20 Arab states in terms of commodity export value in the year 2015, as published by the United Nations Conference on Trade And Development (UNCTAD). The total value of Lebanese exports stood at US Dollar 4 billion in 2015, recording a fall by 12.5% from USD 4.6 in 2014, and 29.4% from a peak of USD 5.7 billion in 2011. On the other hand, and according to UNCTAD figures, Lebanon ranked 77 globally and 12 in the Arab world in terms of imports. Likewise, the total value of Lebanese imports amounted to USD 18.4 billion down by 12.8% from USD 21.1 billion in 2014 and 16.3% from a peak of USD 22 billion in 2013. Based on the above figures, one can conclude that the overall deficit in the trade balance of Lebanon has reached USD 15 billion in 2015, while the coverage of imports by exports was as low as 21.7%. (Al Mustaqbal, May 19, 2016)

 

 

Significant contradiction in the figures was revealed by the results of two surveys on the aspirations of the Lebanese, which raise serious questions about their usefulness. In this context, Byblos Bank Groups published and in cooperation with Suleiman Al Oleyan School of Business at the American University of Beirut, the Consumer Confidence Index in Lebanon CCI results for the first quarter of 2016. The results showed a slight improvement by 5.7% in January against a 1.3% and 10% decline in February and March, 2016, recording the biggest monthly degeneration rate since September 2015. According to the CCI report, the monthly index reached nearly 35.9% in the first quarter of 2016, registering a 2.6% fall from 36.9 points in the fourth quarter of the year 2015. The deterioration was reflected in responses of Lebanese consumers who were targeted in the survey. While 77.3% of respondents considered their financial status to be worse than it was in the past six months, some 19.2% said it remained the same against 3.5% who maintained that their fiscal conditions have relatively improved, while 71% expect their financial conditions to deteriorate. Results also indicated that females possessed a higher confidence as compared to males, and that students recorded a higher confidence against private sector employees, self-employed professionals, housewives, state employees and jobless persons. 

Meanwhile, a new survey conducted by Bayt.com recruitment portal in coordination with YouGov Group for Market Research and Public Consultation on the salaries in the MENA region in the first quarter of 2016, has shown the following results: 56% of the Lebanese believe their salaries are below the average in their sector against 52% who anticipated an increase in their salaries by the end of 2016. Regarding the rise in the cost of living in Lebanon, 46% of the Lebanese confirmed a raise in the rent of houses, 67%  in food prices, and 42% in the price of services. This, they maintained, has led to a weakness in their savings ability. About 43% of respondents said they had zero savings from their salaries. (Al Mustaqbal, Al Diyar, Al Hayat, May 17, 2016)

 

In its edition of today, Al Akbar daily reported that after two and a half-year delayed justice in the case of the killing of Roula Yaacoub, a new court decision issued last week has confirmed that the cause of death was continuous and excessive violence by the defendant against his wife at the time of death and before. The newspaper pointed out that the accusatory decision then had overlooked all the evidence that indict the husband Karam Bazi in the murder and therefore prevented his trial. The new 21-page verdict has justified the accusation of the husband by 3 circumstantial evidences which are: first, the disappearance of the culprit with the start of the investigation; second, testimonials by the lawyer Bushra Khoury, Roula Yaacoub's who maintained that the husband showed up one hour after the death accompanied by his brother who was heard telling the criminal every husband quarrels with his wife and beats her; third, the information and enquiries collected by Halba police station and the preliminary investigations that sustained the perpetrator has violently beaten his wife on the head. What characterizes the new decision is that it detailed and separated the contents of the medical reports that have been disregarded by the earlier accusatory verdict. "In order to scrutinize the causative relationship between the acts of violence and cruelty committed by the defendant and the autoptic results manifested by death, this necessitates a return to the medical reports,” as came in the above decision. (Al Akhbar, May 18, 2016)

 

In collaboration with CCG, the Chamber for Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Tripoli and the North (CCIA) celebrated yesterday the International Day for Girls in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which aims to encourage and open up employment opportunities for young girls in that field. The event also aimed at motivating girls to follow up training sessions in various related fields, and sharing success stories that will inspire their careers. The event also offered a platform for interaction with CISCO experts, the worldwide leader in IT, so as to learn more about innovative developments, and sought to support outstanding talents so as to bring about drastic social and economic changes in community. In the same vein, the Tripoli Chamber ran another workshop entitled, ‘Girls Power Tech’ which included a lecture by Dr. Roula Naja and presentations of various IT projects designed by women students of different universities (notably, Al Manar- Al Islah- the Lebanese French University for Applied Sciences), scientific institutes (Tamkeen Vocational Institute), Al Fayhaa schools (Rawda Al Fayhaa High School) and CCIA business incubator. (Al Diyar, May 17, 2016)