After monitoring how political parties addressed free speech and democracy during the 2022 parliamentary election campaign, the Samir Kassir Foundation (SKF) extended its oversight by daily reviewing the personal Facebook and X accounts of all 128 elected Members of Parliament (MPs). Monthly reports on statements concerning freedom of expression and human rights were issued throughout the two years that followed the election. It is worth noting that most MPs belonging to Hezbollah do not have social media accounts, so the official statements of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc were monitored instead.
From June 2022 to May 2024, 79 MPs (62% of all elected legislators) made a total of 1,393 statements. However, 11 MPs made statements against human rights, displaying xenophobia, homophobia, or attempts to suppress freedom of expression and were subsequently excluded from further monitoring. Furthermore, following an official homophobic statement by the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc in July 2023, all 15 Hezbollah-affiliated MPs were also excluded. As a result, these 26 MPs were classified as “Poor Performers.” MPs in this category were excluded from the cumulative data, with the positive statements previously made by 14 of them retrospectively subtracted due to the overriding weight of their negative statements and the indivisibility principle of human rights: “Denial of one right invariably impedes enjoyment of other rights.” (UNFPA, Human Rights Principles, 2005). Anti-human rights statements are detailed in the last section of this report, exposing the identities of all 26 poor performers.
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 and freedom of expression within the public political discourse throughout the two-year period from June 2022 to May 2024.
