Hiwar 16th April 2007 on "Remembrance of Civil War"

This Hiwar session, titled “Remembering the War,” took place following a landmark occasion in the modern history of Lebanon – that of Remembrance of the Civil War on 16 April. A number of events had been organized on the previous weekend by several civil society groups, some of whom had agreed to attend Na-aM lil Hiwar to discuss the groups’ role and attempts at preventing another civil war from breaking. In addition, Na-aM took participants to task by urging them to assess their readiness and willingness to forge alliances among themselves in order to amass greater power in breaking the current political deadlock.

Approximately 30 attendees included 8 guest speakers from the following groups (listed
alphabetically):

- Civil Society Movement
- "I love Life" Campaign
- Intizarat al Chareb
- Lebanese Youth Democratic Union
- Leftist Assembly for Change
- Nahnou
- Offre Joie
- Samir Kassir Foundation
- Spring Hints

All speakers agreed that the turnout of people at the commemoration events on 16 April was discouraging. They blamed such low turnout on ideological differences among the groups involved in the commemoration, historical events acting as obstacles and collective trauma in people’s memory of the war, and various organizational reasons prior to the commemoration. In suggesting other reasons for the low turnout, one of the guests went as far as making a statement that “the Lebanese people actually want civil war” in this country. Another representative argued that the problem in Lebanon is that “all people talk politics but no one knows politics”.

It was agreed upon that something should be done, but neither a common approach nor a solution was found based on the variety of ideological and organizational aspects. Sectarian regime was commonly found outdated and the civil society actors shared the same views of achieving secularist governance and a reform in the education system in order to create “one nation and one citizenship”. Additionally, it was recommended that the CSOs should meet up in order to draft a plan to boost the significance of the CSO sector. Based on the ideological differences that appeared during the discussion, a true challenge for collaboration and setting up of targets among the civil society groups seems to be the obvious lack of willingness and ability to compromise.