The United Nations, the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Taskforce and the National Commission for Lebanese Women launch a 16-day campaign against gender-based violence

As we mark 25 years of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action the year 2020 is an important milestone for gender equality and work on preventing and ending violence against women and girls. As the world imposed lockdown measures to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, reports showed an alarming increase in the already existing pandemic of violence against women. In Lebanon, also, findings in 2020 showed that the COVID-19 lockdown has  ontributed to an increase in different forms of GBV in particular, as experienced by women and girls. This was exacerbated by the Beirut explosion on August 4, 2020 which has indicated that women and girls are more vulnerable to such shocks, that the risk of violence has increased for them, with an even more limited access to basic services and needs, such as health services and food, and that gender must remain at the forefront of Beirut’s humanitarian response.

(To read the text in its entirety, please download the PDF below)