Background and Context

In March 2024, Lebanese Members of Parliament (MPs) issued a total of 99 statements concerning human rights.

Of these statements, 48% were dedicated to topics related to women, either commemorating International Women’s Day on March 8 or addressing women’s rights issues. Additionally, 32% of the statements focused on Israel’s war crimes, while 16% highlighted instances of repression of freedom.

Since October 2023, the most discussed human rights topic on social media among MPs has been the war on Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of at least 31,634 Palestinians.

Methodology

In March 2024, 43 MPs collectively made 99 statements regarding human rights and public freedoms, posting them on their personal accounts on X and Facebook.

These statements have been classified into six categories:

• Israel’s war crimes
• Women’s rights (including statements related to International Women’s Day)
• Repression of freedom
• Judicial independence
• Children’s rights
• Arbitrary arrests

Data Display

It is important to acknowledge that the data collected in this process may not be exhaustive. Nonetheless, despite its inherent limitations, the gathered data provides a foundation for generating hypotheses concerning the discourse surrounding human rights issues. This analysis specifically focuses on human rights, journalists’ rights, and freedom of speech within the public political discourse throughout March 2024.

Figure 1. Distribution of data across Members of Parliament

Figure 2. Distribution of data across political parties and groups

Figure 3. Distribution of data based on group type

Figure 4. Distribution of data across theme of statement

 Table 1. Distribution of data across theme of statement and group name

Analysis

In March 2024, among the 99 statements made, a significant focus was placed on women’s rights. Specifically, 47 statements delved into this topic:

• 31 of them centered around International Women’s Day, observed on March 8.
• 16 statements addressed the broader struggles women face in achieving gender equality. Among these 16 statements, six were specifically tied to International Women’s Day, while the remaining 10 discussed the issue independently of this day.

Similar to previous months, there was considerable attention on Israel’s war crimes with a total of 32 statements.

Furthermore, 16 statements tackled the issue of repression of freedom, responding to several incidents:

1. The violence directed at MP Melhem Khalaf and other lawyers and activists by army members,
2. The subpoena of activist and scholar Makram Rabah,
3. And the assault on activist Alaa Harakeh.

To gain a deeper understanding of the political landscape and identify the most vocal groups on human rights in March 2024, an examination of the total count of statements made by each group proves insightful. The following tables provide an overview of these findings:

 
Table 2. Ranking based on absolute numbers - political groups with highest to lowest numbers of statements

 
Table 3. Ranking based on relative numbers - from the political group with the highest percentage of members who made statements to the one with the lowest percentage

Table 4. Ranking of the top-10 MPs who shared most statements from June 2022 till March 2024

Notably, in March 2024, MP Mark Daou released seven statements concerning human rights, while MPs Halimé Kaakour, and Najat Saliba made six each.

Also, MP Mark Daou maintains his lead in the cumulative number of statements made since June 2022.