BEIRUT, April 20, 2015 – The wives of the missing and disappeared in Lebanon continue to suffer serious social, psychological, legal and financial effects on their lives, and the lives of their children, says a new report by the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World at Lebanese American University.
The 46-page report, “Living with the Shadows of the Past: The Impact of Disappearance on Wives of the Missing in Lebanon,” written by Dr. Christalla Yakinthou, is based on extensive interviews with 23 wives of diverse backgrounds. It reveals that they continue to search for answers and relief from the government decades after their husbands went missing during the war.
None of the women interviewed for the study had received clear information from the government about the fate of their husbands. The women were most likely to receive updates on commissions, laws, and progress on the disappeared from civil society groups or by word of mouth.
“The primary, and sometimes only, concern of these women is to know what happened to their husbands,” explains Myriam Sfeir Murad, Assistant Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World. “For many, justice is learning the truth, whether their husbands are alive or dead.”
One woman interviewed for the study said: “I never imagined that we’d hear nothing about him . . . Why won’t they tell us whether they are dead or alive? . . . If they’re dead, where are they buried?”
Many of the wives took on the burden of looking for their husbands themselves, often believing it would be less risky for a female relative than a male relative. However, this was not always true. Of the 23 women interviewed, 15 were victims of one or more extortion attempts.
For all of the women interviewed, life changed immediately and drastically when their husbands were disappeared. Many spoke of experiencing chronic physical and psychological symptoms, consistent with exposure to trauma. Almost all talked about how they felt compelled to become both mother and father to their children.
The loss of their husbands – the primary wage earners – strained the families’ finances, and almost all of the women felt added financial pressures, with many entering the workforce for the first time. As one woman recounted, “We sold his car [to live]. The government didn’t pay us his pension . . . [His employers] stopped his salary immediately after they found out he was kidnapped.”
As their stories reveal, the hardships experienced by wives of the disappeared are compounded by patriarchal laws and practices in Lebanon that require the authority of a male family member to carry out legal and administrative transactions, such as accessing bank accounts, transferring property titles, claiming inheritance, and applying for children’s identity documents.
Because the government has done so little to address these violations in the years since the war, the interviewees were skeptical that Lebanese officials could—or would—provide basic remedies for the violations they had suffered.
“In a culture where there is enormous reluctance to talk about the war and its legacy, the families of the disappeared continue to be overlooked and ignored. They are unwelcome reminders of an unresolved past,” says Carmen Hassoun Abou Jaoudé, Head of Office in Lebanon for the International Center for Transitional Justice. “But they have the right to know the truth and to reparations, as direct victims of these crimes, and the government must respect that.”
Looking ahead, the report makes important recommendations to Lebanese policy makers and civil society on how to address the rights and needs of the families of the disappeared.
At the top of the list is legislation creating a legal certificate that would allow families to declare their loved ones “absent by reason of disappearance,” not dead. This would help to avoid the moral and emotional hardship of declaring dead someone whose fate remains unknown. It would provide measures to resolve some of the legal ambiguities that surround the disappeared and allow relatives to exercise their rights to child custody, inheritance, insurance, transfer of property, and remarriage, among others.
The report, funded by the European Union and UN Women, also calls for an independent investigatory body to be established to gather and share information about the fate of the missing.
A launching event will be held on Monday, April 20, at 5:00 pm, at The Lebanese American University (LAU), Beirut, Business Building, Room 903. To attend, please e-mail iwsaw@lau.edu.lb
The full report can be downloaded in English and Arabic.
Media Contacts
Kelli Muddell, Director of ICTJ’s Gender Justice Program Tel: +1 917 637 3814 E-mail: kmuddell@ictj.org
Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World at the Lebanese American University Tel: + 961 1 786 456 Ext. 1128 E-mail: iwsaw@lau.edu.lb
Photo: A Lebanese woman, left, holds a picture of her disappeared relative during a sit-in marking the 35th anniversary of the Lebanese 1975-1990 civil war, in front of the United Nations House in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, April 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Grace Kassab)
