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Lebanon + 2 more

Monthly Action Points (MAP) for the Security Council: August 2023

For August, in which the United States has the presidency of the UN Security Council, the MAP provides recommendations on the situations in Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

Lebanon

Lebanon’s interconnected economic, political, climate, and social crises are structural, multi-faceted and mutually reinforcing, with distinct gendered impacts on people with disabilities, LGBTIQ+ individuals, refugees, and migrants, requiring holistic, rights-based and gender-sensitive policy responses. Corruption, impunity and inequality, which are driving the current crises, have led to, and are reinforced by, ongoing election delays, deterioration of the rule of law, inflation and extreme poverty, an economic crisis, inequalities in the labor market, discriminatory legal frameworks and norms, a rise in domestic violence, lack of access to education, electricity, and medicine, abuse of migrant workers under the Kafala system, and forced and summary deportations of Syrian refugees, all of which undermine people’s access to basic rights and essential services. Failure to address past abuses and crimes through transitional justice efforts, such as the widespread gender-based violence perpetrated during the Lebanese Civil War, is one of the root causes of the failure of the justice system to advance accountability for more recent crimes, such as the Beirut Port explosion, politically sensitive murders or the unlawful and excessive use of force against protestors since 2019, and is emblematic of the culture of impunity that prevails. In its renewal of the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, the Council should maintain existing WPS provisions, and further call on UNIFIL to:

  • Actively promote the safe, full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in elections, including as candidates, in the mission’s efforts to support implementation of Lebanon’s National Action Plan on 1325, and further collaborate with women mediators in southern Lebanon to foster an inclusive and sustainable peace process.

  • Consult with women’s, feminist, and other diverse civil society groups as part of its mandate to mainstream gender, and further strengthen partnerships in implementing activities related to humanitarian support and political processes.

  • Support efforts to remove the barriers to women’s meaningful participation and leadership, including through the repeal of all discriminatory laws and adoption of a unified personal status law.

  • Adopt a survivor-centered approach in efforts to prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence.

  • Ensure enhanced reporting on WPS includes details regarding barriers to the realization of women’s human rights; threats and reprisals against women human rights defenders and peacebuilders; and intersectional analysis of the way in which the current crises impact diverse women, including LGBTIQ+ individuals and persons with disabilities.

  • Carry out all humanitarian support activities without discrimination, in a gender-, age-, and disability-sensitive manner in accordance with existing obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL) and ensure access to the full range of livelihood, legal, psychosocial and medical services, including sexual and reproductive health services.

Yemen

During any forthcoming discussions of the situation in Yemen, members of the Security Council should articulate their unwavering support for inclusive Yemeni-led and Yemeni-owned political process with the full, equal and meaningful participation of diverse women, youth and civil society of all political backgrounds from all regions of Yemen, including in the truce and ceasefire negotiations, as well as broader political and peace processes. Relatedly, Council members should demand that all UN-supported peace committees include women, including the Prisoners’ Exchange, the Taiz, and the Security and Military Committees, as well as in any committees formed in the future. In the most recent prisoner exchange process, only one woman was exchanged out of 887 total individuals; this underlines the urgency of ensuring that women not only are part of the committee and process, but that the process itself mainstreams gender as a cross-cutting issue. Council members should demand all parties to conflict, and their allies, uphold international humanitarian, human rights, and refugee law, and emphasize that women’s human rights should be non-negotiable in any peace and political process. Ongoing human rights violations targeting marginalized communities, including diverse women, persons with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, displaced persons, migrants and ethnic and religious minorities continue to be documented. In particular, women and girls face restrictions on their freedom of movement resulting from the requirement that women are accompanied by a mahram (male guardian), lack of access to basic services, including sexual and reproductive health services, and threats and risks, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, hate speech, and even targeted killings, particularly for women peacebuilders, human rights defenders, political leaders, activists, artists, and journalists. In recent months, new government-led restrictions on the operations of women-led and civil society organizations have created a shrinking space for women’s social and political participation. Further, Council members should reinforce the unacceptability of the increase in cyber-attacks and violence targeting women, which is threatening their safety and security and preventing their participation in public life. Alongside these concerning developments, there are further indications that policies could be enacted which result in discrimination against women in other aspects of their life, such as higher education; the gradual adoption of policies that facilitate the undermining of women’s human rights signals the importance of ensuring the international community places women’s rights and gender equality at the heart of its efforts in Yemen.