Hand in Hand to Combat Domestic Violence

The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Hamra was abuzz today with more than 200 people attending KAFA’s launch of “Women and Men Hand in Hand to End Violence: Strategies and approaches of working with men and boys to end violence against women” training manual. The attendees were a diverse crowd of mostly women – young, old, Muslim, Christian, Lebanese, immigrant – but there were many men as well.

Minster of Social Affairs Salim Al-Sayegh was the keynote speaker at the event, and he was cheered as he announced his support for laws against domestic violence in Lebanon. Ms. Ghida Anani, Programme Coordinator for KAFA, made welcoming remarks before Ms. Zoya Rouhana, KAFA’s Director, spoke about KAFA’s work. Ms. Magda El Sanousi from Oxfam, a sponsor of the project, and Ms. Rania Tarazi from UNIFEM’s Amman office, spoke about their organizations and partnerships before Minister Al-Sayegh spoke. Attendees were then given a presentation on the manual.

The event marked the start of a new approach towards combating domestic violence in Lebanon, as it recognizes the need for men to be involved equally with women in the fight to overcome these crimes against women. In the Middle East, many still believe it is ok for a man to beat his wife. KAFA is one organization that is working hard to erase this mentality of acceptance. Dinosaurs are extinct; it’s time for domestic violence to become extinct, too.

KAFA will be online soon at http://www.kafa.org.lb/.

Yes to dialogue about the civil war

More than 30 people – mostly young people – gathered at Chords Lounge in Hamra last night to listen to Naam Lil Hiwar: The Civil War According to 3 Different Generations: 1960’s; 1970’s; 1990’s and 3 Different Tales: A Detainee; An Artist; A Citizen. The purpose was to have a dialogue about the war.

As the event was in Arabic, I was not able to understand everything. At the beginning, organizers told people the event was to be in fusHa, but many of the participants either would not or could not speak it, so I missed a lot. However, I wanted to make a few observations in addition to pointing out Naam Lil Hiwar:

• Dialogue once the speakers were finished was very active and at times very emotional, though a few witty participants kept the tension level down. One young woman left early somewhat upset, but the dialogue was very civil.



• One man made a point to say Lebanese need to quit blaming outside influence for the civil war, pointing out that the leaders of Lebanese factions are indeed Lebanese. If more people held this idea, it would go a long way towards solving internal differences.



• Some of the talk was about how today’s youth don’t understand the civil war. There is no uniform textbook in history classes, leaving youth to get the information from parents and other adults who may not have the most objective view of the war or who don’t want to talk about it. The youth all seemed to grasp the idea that it is important to understand the war in order to move the country forward.



• Attendees were pretty evenly split among men and women, though all of the speakers were men.



• The Lebanese Twitterverse was absent from the event. It would be great to see these active young people being interested in dialogue about Lebanon’s problems so they can participate and lead in the solutions.

Speaking of participation, Lebanese youth in general are apathetic towards issues of citizenship like engaging in such dialogue sessions as Nahwa al-Muwatiniya's Naam Lil Hiwar. This program, which has recently been expanded to include other parts of Lebanon, and programs like the NDI-sponsored Citizen Lebanon, are vital to strengthening and stabilizing Lebanon’s democracy.

I encourage you to attend the next Naam session.

Think about your plastic bags!

Look closely at this photo. (Click it to make it larger if you need to.) What do you see? The beautiful candy blue waters of the Mediterranean? Look closer. See those dark spots in the water? Those are plastic bags. Disgusting enough that there are folks who care so little about life that they don't mind trashing the planet, but there's more to this photo. That's Lebanese trash on the coast of Cyprus.

How do I know it's from Lebanon? Well, as I was walking these beautiful beaches over the long weekend and came across this horrific sight, my immediate thought was "I bet that's from Lebanon." So I looked. I looked at many of the bags, bags in Arabic, bags in English with the words "Beirut," "Hamra," and "Saida" printed on them.

Boy, if I were a Cypriot, I'd be pretty angry. Maybe I'd be demanding my government to cut relations with this filthy neighboring country whose trash washes upon my shores until they do something about it. Ok, maybe that's a little extreme. But at least I'd be pressuring for the EU to give money to Lebanon for anti-littering campaigns and clean up the garbage dumps campaigns and such.

Where are the Lebanese NGOs working on campaigns to limit plastic bag use? Where is anyone telling people to think about their use of plastic bags? Where are calls for a plastic bag tax? They work! On January 1 of this year, Washington DC instituted a 5 cent plastic bag tax. As a result, according to a March 29th article in the Washington Post:

In its first assessment of how the new law is working, the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue estimates that city food and grocery establishments issued about 3.3 million bags in January, which suggests a remarkable decrease. Prior to the bag tax taking effect Jan 1, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer had estimated that about 22.5 million bags were being issued per month in 2009.

That's progress. People bring their own bags to the grocery. When I tried to bring my own cloth bag to supermarket Idriss in Hamra yesterday, some guy at the door tried to take it from me and told me I couldn't bring it into the store. I argued and finally won, but it shouldn't be a battle. It should be normal.

This is 2010. The planet's running in crisis mode. It's time for people to start thinking about the consequences of their actions, even things that seem so trivial like the bags you use to carry your groceries. We need to work on this!

Call for Proposals for NGOs working on human trafficking

بالبشر
استدراج عروض مشاريع لـ2010

دعت مبادرة الامم المتحدة العالمية لمكافحة الاتجار بالبشر الهيئات الاهلية والمدنية التي لا تبغى الربح والتي تعمل في كافة انحاء العالم، لتقديم عروض مشاريع للحصول على تمويل من برنامج المنح الصغيرة الخاص بالمبادرة.

للمزيد من المعلومات حول الموضوع يمكنكم/كن مراجعة الوصلة التالية: http://lkdg.org/ar/node/3406


لمعرفة المزيد حول كل جديد على صعيدي التنمية الاجتماعية والتحركات المدنية، زوروا موقع بوابة لبنان للتنمية والمعرفة على العنوان التالي:
http://lkdg.org/