Vision of Visibility – Politics of Women’s Rights and Development in Lebanon
Sirin Knecht
Contemporary Lebanon is shaped by a past of civil war, foreign occupation, and forced migration due to long-standing military and extraterritorial conflicts in the region. Lebanon’s fragile political economy depends mostly on either diaspora remittances or international interventionism. Security concerns emerge through longer period of domestic political deadlock, economic stagnation, the ongoing Syrian civil war, and radicalization spillover. Lebanese state and political power is fragmented among sectarian and religious affiliation lines. Lebanon’s pluralistic jurisdiction entails legal heritages and systems’ overlapping due to colonialism and imperialism. Besides a civil law, contemporary Lebanese jurisdiction entails 15 different religious personal status laws. Ruling authority over family law is transferred to 18 officially recognized religious groups. Such a composition of constitutional law puts in question universality and equality among Lebanese citizenship holders and between men and women. Since the end of both the civil war in Lebanon and the cold war as well as the broader establishment of international law politics, globalization and transnational entanglement carried out a rising of NGOs and their involvement and agency in public order or social change. New approaches and conferences on women in development consolidate agreements and conventions on women’s matters in international law bodies. Addressing to strengthen women’s rights has been put particularly on many local NGO advocacy agenda. I therefore explore how localized NGOs use women’s rights demands in order to make visible and tackle social injustice and inequality. Brokering human rights discourse and projecting international law on various levels, vernacular NGOs negotiate the interpretational sovereignty and its legitimization caused by the prerogative of power and representation. The research project promotes an in-depth ethnographic analysis of institutional (political) activism and makes a theoretical contribution to contemporary questions of expertise, and knowledge in the field of NGOs and human rights. It further reflects concepts of humanitarianism, morality and normativity.
Laufzeit
2015 - 2022
Finanzierung
International Max Planck Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment (REMEP)
Betreuung
Prof. Dr. Olaf Zenker
Prof. Dr. Marie-Claire Foblets