Lebanon Doesn’t Care Much For Human Rights

Human Rights Watch put this on the record today:

Lebanon rejected a large number of important recommendations about the rights of women, refugees, migrants, and homosexuals during its UN Human Rights Council review, Human Rights Watch said today

The details:

UN member states raised their concerns regarding ongoing human rights violations in Lebanon and proposed concrete recommendations to address them. The country’s delegation agreed to establish a National Commission on Human Rights and to improve the fight against torture by criminalizing all forms of torture and ill-treatment. But the delegation dismissed recommendations that would promote equality for women, provide Palestinian refugees with the right to own property, protect migrants from frequent abuse, decriminalize homosexuality, and abolish the death penalty.

As I’m reading those items one by one I’m realizing that what the UN sees as “human rights” Lebanon sees as politically explosive and controversial topics.

The good news is that, on each of these topics, there’s a lively movement fighting (and advocating) for it: (Equality for women, Palestinian refugee rights, migrant worker abuse, homosexual criminalization and death penalty ). The sad news is that the government is fighting back.