Timeline

1926

Adoption of the Lebanese Constitution with the article 7 recognizing the equality of all citizens before the law is declared as well as article 9 guarantying the respect of the personal status and religious interests of the population.

1936

Decision 60 L.R. adopted. Civil marriages performed abroad were officially recognized in Lebanon.[1]

1957

Lebanese National Bloc leader, Raymond Edde, submitted a proposal to Parliament in order to establish civil marriage in Lebanon.

1971

First optional civil personal status draft law was proposed by the Democratic party.

1981

Second optional civil personal status law was proposed by the Secular Democratic party.

1990

End of the civil war, adoption of the Taef agreement and amendment of the Constitution.

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A preamble was introduced stating that “Lebanon is Arab in its identity and in its affiliation… Article 7 and 9 remained intact.

Jan 2024

The Lebanese parliament’s human rights committee discusses a draft law that aimed at unifying the minimum marriage age to 18.

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The law, submitted by the Lebanese Council to Resist Violence Against Woman (LECORVAW)[7]…

Contextual Update

This mapping covers the situation in Lebanon up to November 2024. It was written at a time when the country had been under ongoing war since 2023. Since September 2024, Israel expanded its military aggression against Lebanon, launching hundreds of airstrikes across South and the Bekaa, as well as targeting the capital and its southern suburb. Crimes of genocide and against humanity were perpetrated by Israel. These attacks included the destruction of towns and residential areas, detonation of thousands of electronic pagers and communication devices, killing journalists, medical first aid providers and civilians. These aggressions had led to the displacement of approximately one million individuals, nearly one third of the population, many of whom have sought refuge in public schools and institutions converted into makeshift shelters. According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, between October 8, 2023 and November 28, 2024 the death toll reached 3,670 martyrs and 15,413 people injured. A ceasefire agreement officially came into effect on November 28, 2024; however, thousands of violations from the Israeli side have been reported since. The “Gender Alert” issued by UN Women in September 2024 highlighted the disproportionate impact of the war on women and girls. According to the report, among the thousands of displaced families, nearly 12,000 are headed by women. The most vicious aspect of women and girls’ reality during the war remains their intensified risk and exposure to domestic violence, sexual harassment and exploitation, as well as trafficking and forced prostitution. This war unfolded against the backdrop of longstanding structural challenges, including an oligarchic governance, a financial and economic collapse and the devaluation of the local currency since 2019. These conditions have significantly exacerbated vulnerabilities, particularly for women, in particular displaced girls and women head of households.

A World Bank report on poverty (May 2024) shows that poverty has more than tripled over the past decade, reaching a whopping 44% of the total population by 2022, with the poverty gap rising from 3% in 2012 to 9.4% in 2022. Prior to the war in 2024, there had been a rise in discrimination against individuals and groups in vulnerable situation, including forced deportations of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and increased attacks targeting LGBTIQ communities. Public discourse became increasingly hostile, with prominent figures contributing to a wave of hate in response to a draft bill proposed by nine members of parliament to decriminalize homosexuality. This was accompanied by incidents such as attacks carried out by extremist groups against queer friendly places in Beirut.

In the area of civil marriage and personal status laws, the year 2024 saw a decline in civil marriages notarized abroad. The number decreased from over 36,200 marriage contracts in 2018, to fewer than 31,000 in 2023, due to the economic and financial crisis between 2019 and 2023 (Mohamad Chamseddine).

The Issue

Personal status issues are governed by article 9 of the Constitution, as well as by the decision 60 L.R., issued during the period of the French mandate and still in force to this day. These laws give religious institutions legal and administrative status and jurisdiction over personal status matters, including marriage, divorce, child custody, alimony and inheritance.

These laws not only enshrine male privilege in several areas, but also differentiate among women across sects, stripping them of their ability to make unified claims to authorities. In Lebanon, there are eighteen officially recognized religious sects and fifteen different personal status laws.

Despite this, the state does have the constitutional power to offer a secular alternative and to devise an optional civil personal status law for all citizens. In parallel, the decision 60 L.R. recognizes the creation of a “civil law community” that would assemble individuals who do not belong to a sectarian community and who wish to be governed by a civil law regarding their personal status issues. On another note, article 25 of the decision 60 L.R. allows Lebanese couples to have a civil marriage outside Lebanon.

Therefore, while civil marriage can be celebrated abroad and officially recognized by the Lebanese government, the government does not allow civil marriages to be contracted in Lebanon. In fact, since 1951 several draft bills were presented in order to recognize and legalize civil marriages in Lebanon, but they were rejected consistently with resistance spearheaded by the religious authorities.

In 2012, one loophole of the decision 60 L.R. was used in order to legalize civil marriages contracted in Lebanon. This loophole based on the Civil Center for National Initiative (CCNI) was to allow citizens to remove their sectarian affiliations from the civil census records before contracting the marriage on the Lebanese soil.

In this year, the first civil marriage Nidal Darwich and Khouloud Sukkarieh on the Lebanese soil was celebrated. It took the authorities five months until the marriage was registered, despite a favorable opinion of the Legislation and Consultation Committee at the Ministry of Justice.

It was not long before the couple started receiving death threats, following a fatwa by the highest Sunni authority in the country calling all supporters of the legalization of civil marriage “apostates and outside the religion of Islam,” which eventually led the couple to seek asylum in Sweden.

Despite this legal precedence, the registration of 50 civil marriages contracted on the Lebanese soil were halted. This was also due to a change at the ministerial level. Some ministers of internal affairs and municipalities refused to register these marriages, one minister, Nouhad Machnouk, advised all couples insisting on getting married civilly “to go to Cyprus”.

Currently, debates over a civil law proposal reemerges on the eve of junctural political events, particularly parliamentary elections. In December 2022, KAFA organization presented a proposal for a unified personal status law. The draft law was sent to parliament, and signed by 9 parliamentarians (out of 128), 5 of whom are among the newly-elected “Change MPs”. A fierce wave of backlash was launched at them by conservative religious clerics who denounced any attempt at contracting civil marriages in Lebanon.

In parallel to this holistic and systemic approach, another strategy has been to address personal status issues separately as it is done with the child marriage issue. Given the spike in child marriages numbers several NGOs and National women machineries have proposed draft laws and presented them to the parliament for discussion and approval. Till date no law has been adopted in order to put an end to child marriages.

Types of contestation

Among the six types of backlashes drawn from Flood et al. (2018), the manifestations of backlash on the level of women’s social rights and particularly civil marriage, include the dominant political parties’ deliberate lack of bureaucratic implementation, particularly inaction and active stalling when it comes to legalizing civil marriage. Other types that can be clearly observed in this context are stigmatization and vilification of civil marriage supporters, as well as explicit violent threats, particularly by high religious authorities and their devoted followers and cyber armies.

The issue of civil marriage raises concerns of doctrinal politics and status politics if we are to use the typology of Htun and Weldon (2010). There is an obvious clash between the state, religious groups, and feminist activists on the matter. Further, the issue of civil marriage is linked to the French colonial legacy, in how it provided leeway for secular citizens (and French soldiers who wished to marry Lebanese citizens during the colonial period) to contest abiding by family laws by opting to belong to a “civil law community.”

While religious authorities across all sects have rejected the execution of civil marriage on Lebanese soil, activity within civic and popular spaces has been significantly richer and more prolific on the issue of civil marriage.

Actors

Drivers

The sectarian identity of the political system in Lebanon, as well as the intertwinement of the political and financial agenda between the politics of sectarianism and the control of religious institutions has indeed enshrined the legitimacy of religious courts and has granted them unchallenged control over the private lives of Lebanese citizens. The communal and sectarian classification of communities in Lebanon, and the control that religious institutions exhibit over these communities creates a robust structure for segregation and control. The patriarchal nature of this sectarian state, reinforced by patriarchal religious institutions collectively reproduce structural discrimination and oppression against women. As a result, the grip of traditional religious institutions remains hard to challenge, which acts as a major barrier to implementing a civil marriage code in Lebanon. The patriarchal hierarchies and the politics of communal control continue to contribute to backlash against civil marriage and women’s rights in issues of marriage, divorce, custody, and alimony.

Spaces

Secular citizens and advocates believe that civil marriage could strengthen communal ties, unite people from different faiths, and diminish the confessional and sectarian makeup of Lebanon. On the other hand, the intersecting interests of conservative religious authorities and most sectarian parties enable them to leverage their power to oppose it and obstruct its implementation. Formal and informal processes and networks were used to steer the draft law through the approval process and counter-opposition and questions.

Events

In 2023, Lebanese Kuwaiti Producer and Journalist, Nadia Ahmad, took to social media to share her prolonged custody battle. Throughout the dispute, her husband had repeatedly kidnapped their daughter, prohibiting Nadia from seeing or communicating with her for days, and accused her of abusing drugs, alcohol, and psychotropic substances, and of hence being “mentally imbalanced”. He also relied on an unauthorized therapist to forge a report to prove to the court that she was mentally unstable and an “unfit mother”. Although both parties obtained custody verdicts from two different Jaafari courts, one of which granted Ahmad full custody rights, she was arrested and detained in November 2023 for refusing to hand her daughter over to her father. Ahmad was eventually released, but her story was followed through social media in real time and triggered an uproar in the country’s feminist circles as it captures perfectly how sectarian personal status laws discriminate against women and deny them their basic right to exercise and live their motherhood.

Tactics

Types of tactics:

Non- registration of civil marriage contracts: As of September 2024, more than 50 couples remain unable to register their civil marriages.
Removal of religious affiliation: Individuals who strike their religious identity from official records risk losing their civic rights, including voting, running for office, and employment in public institutions.
Unified religious opposition: religious authorities across Muslim, Christian, and Druze communities have consistently opposed civil marriage: “Any Muslim with legal or executive authority in Lebanon who supports the legalisation of civil marriage is an apostate and outside the religion of Islam […]
Moral stigmatization: conservative political actors equate civil marriage with adultery.
Social pressure: families and communities may exert pressure on couples who choose to pursue a civil marriage.
De-registration practices: Civil marriages contracted online during COVID-19 period were reportedly annulled by the General Directorate of Personal Status without the couples’ consent or prior notification. As a result, children registered under records designated for those born to unmarried couples are exposed to social stigma of being labeled “illegitimate,” and are denied several rights.
Anti-feminist mobilization: the emergence of organizations affiliated with religious institutions targeting feminist organizations that support civil marriage, as well as MPs advocating for a unified civil law.

Amending personal status laws and establishing a civil law to govern matters related to marriage, divorce, and custody would strip religious figures and politicians of their power. It is important to note that religious marriages constitute a significant source of revenue for religious sects, which derive financial benefit from administering them.

De-registration of civil marriages contracted online:

Khalil Rizkallah and Nada Nehme were the first couple to get civil marriage online in Lebanon (in November 2021) after being assured that their marriage will be formally recognized. Six months later, their marriage was officially registered. Less than a year later however (September 2022), they found out that the authorities abruptly de-registered it and no longer recognized it. This puts their one-month-old daughter in a legally precarious and volatile situation, at risk of being denied registration, as the government requires a marriage certificate to register newborns.

the emergence of anti-feminist organizations affiliated with religious institutions

The organizations support sectarian personal laws and consider civil marriage an idea exported from Western societies, aiming at destroying family values and societies. Hence, an organization known as Hasem (حسم), believes that it has a certain mission which is protecting the family structure from any perceived social threat that justifies its opposition to civil marriage.

Countertactics

Lawyers Abdallah Salam and Marie-Joe Abi-Nassif, both from politically affiliated families,

decided to tie the knot civilly in Lebanon on June 15, 2019. Their marriage was the first civil marriage to be performed in Lebanon under Minister of Interior and Municipalities, Raya Al-Hassan. Joseph Bechara, the President of Lebanon’s Council of Notaries Public, was the one who officiated their union. Despite their attempt to register the union, it remains stalled at the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities, as with other marriages that followed.

The couple issued a statement declaring that “civil marriage is not only a matter of individual freedoms and gender equality but would contribute to reforming Lebanon’s dysfunctional sectarian system and advance secular values in the Middle East.” It is hoped that such unions will influence the youth to think more in a civil manner and urge them to denounce the monopoly of religious authorities over family law.