Lebanon at the 37th session of the UPR: leveraging digital rights protection for socio-economic recovery
On 10 December 1948, Lebanon was one of the original three countries that began the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Universal Declaration) which is today known as one of the most important human rights instruments. Describing the values that underpin the Universal Declaration, Dr Charles Habib Malik, the Lebanese representative said that:
“whoever values man and his individual freedom above everything else cannot fail to find in the present Declaration a potent ideological weapon. If wielded in complete goodwill, sincerity and truth…”
The Universal Declaration since then has laid the foundation for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and many other human rights instruments. Lebanon has since ratified the ICCPR which means that obligations inherent in its various provisions, including the rights to privacy and freedom of expression online must be met by Lebanon.
However, more than seventy-two years since Lebanon’s historic participation in the drafting of the Universal Declaration and more than forty-eight years since its ratification of the ICCPR, Lebanon seems to have abandoned the values shared by Dr Malik. The human rights principles which were at the heart of this history have now come under threat particularly today, as basic digital rights — the right to privacy and freedom of expression and opinion online are routinely violated.
For example, between 2010 till 2020, there were 170 documented cases of detention with respect to the right to freedom of expression online. Currently, In the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region, Lebanon has the fourth most expensive Internet access while the gap between Internet availability and affordability is one of the most significant in the region. As at April 2021, it also does not have a data protection law.
Articles 17 and 19 of the ICCPR which focus on the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression and opinion respectively are some of the basic digital rights protection obligations of Lebanon. These rights are divided into four broad aspects to include freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of information and censorship of content, right to equal access and opportunity and the right to data protection and privacy on the Internet.
One of the ways through which these obligations are monitored for compliance is the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR is one of the mechanisms established by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (the Council) in 2006. Its primary goal is to facilitate the protection and promotion of human rights on the ground in all of the UN’s 193 member states through a peer-review system based on a member-state’s human rights obligations. Such obligations include those from treaties like the Universal Declaration and the ICCPR. Every four years, often referred to as a cycle, the reports of 42 countries are reviewed by the UPR Working Group comprising 47 members of the Council. These reports are from stakeholders including governments, human rights institutions and civil society in the State under review (SuR). As is custom, various thematic aspects of human rights are considered by other member states in their recommendations .
Lebanon’s first report was first reviewed in 2011 and has since been reviewed three times. At the sixteenth session of the Council which was Lebanon’s first UPR review, Lebanon received 129 recommendations from 49 UN member states with one recommendation on the right to freedom of expression by Armenia.
In the second review at the thirty-first session of the Council, Lebanon received 221 recommendations from 98 UN member states and only one related to the right to freedom of expression. It is noteworthy that the recommendation on the right to freedom of expression made by Israel was not accepted by Lebanon.
The most recent review on 18 January 2021 focuses the efforts of the Government of Lebanon in addressing the recommendations made to it by other member states in the previous cycle and taking recommendations based on the report of the cycle between 2015 to 2020. In the previous cycle, only one recommendation was made with respect to protecting the right to freedom of expression out of the 257 recommendations by 93 member states. It is worth noting that the recommendation was not made with respect to the right to freedom of expression online.
In the recent review, Lebanon received 307 recommendations from 105 UN member states. Eight of these recommendations touched on the right to freedom of expression generally while there were six recommendations on the right to freedom of expression online to include protection of bloggers and online expression.
There were no recommendations to Lebanon on any of the rights to freedom of information and censorship of content, equal access and opportunity online or data protection and privacy on the Internet. These pockets of recommendations to Lebanon on basic digital rights by states demonstrates that awareness on the need to prioritise basic digital rights protection especially during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UPR process is inadequate.
Moving forward, it is important to note that not only has Lebanon just suffered immensely from the Beirut explosions on 4 August 2020 but also has dire projections for its economic future. These are coupled with the biting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in dealing with these challenges, the Government of Lebanon must not only ensure that it provides affordable Internet access across divides, problematic provisions of laws on free speech like the Penal Code, Publication Law and others must be reviewed. In addition to this, given the peculiar challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital policies must be developed and carried based on international human rights standards. In doing this, Lebanon can begin to regain its lost grounds as digital rights are not mutually exclusive of economic development.
