Building on the stories and experiences of four retired individuals in the military forces and public sector, this paper explores the limitations of the existing social insurance and pension schemes and questions their realities in light of the multiple and overlapping crises Lebanon is currently facing. The article highlights how the current crisis has brought considerable social and economic downgrading to public and military personnel, as the provided healthcare services and pension schemes are no longer adequate or a source of safety in their old age. The article concludes that the pension schemes are insufficient to ensure a dignified life for these individuals and their families.

This article underlines how and in what ways anti-sectarian independent groups competing in (university) students and syndicates elections against the traditional political parties set a precedent through their electoral contestations and mobilisations. This article demonstrates that these elections contributed to the creation of collective consciousness reflected by a generation of activists advocating for anti-sectarianism and demanding change of the system. The paper exhibits how student councils and syndicates acted as extended arenas of “Hirak” (in Arabic “movement”), protracting traditional street mobilisation, in their fundamental role in contesting the existing political system. It explains the articulation of the university students’ and syndicates’ movement and the October 2019 thawra. 

The paper provides a contextualized and easily accessible history of Lebanese organized labor from the mandate period up to this day. The paper is divided into six main sections, each corresponding to a distinct phase of the historical development of Lebanese organized labor. In each section, the paper identifies the main actors, demands, events, urgencies and constraints shaping the articulation and the trajectories of (de/) mobilization of workers’ collective agency and organization, so as to provide a cumulative and genealogical overview of the changes, continuities and peculiarities characterizing each phase. The paper builds for the most part on the piecemeal and dis-organic body of scholarship currently constituting the bulk of scholarly knowledge on Lebanese labor, in an attempt to provide a synthesis and an index thereof. In so doing, the paper aims at offering a directory and a ready-to-hand compendium for researchers, analyst and practitioners interested in Lebanese labor, and possibly contribute to (re)ignite interest in this still widely under-researched topic. 

This article explores global vaccination inequity and wether equity in this regard is achievable between North and South. It covers the challenges faced by health systems in the region during the pandemic, issues of equity in access to the vaccine, and the developments and barriers relevant to vaccine production in the South.