Advocacy and lobbying for the right to know

Established in 1990, Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE) has been working on the issue of the Lebanese detained in Syria. Later, SOLIDE expanded its focus to include a more general and comprehensive issue of ‘enforced disappearance,’ which should recognise the issue of kidnapping and disappearance regardless of the assumed abductor and the location of disappearance. One of SOLIDE’s main objectives since 2006 was to treat both cases (i.e. Lebanese prisoners in Israel and Lebanese prisoners in Syria) in the same way. It also supported other NGOs and victim groups, notably the Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon (CFKDL). SOLIDE supported CFKDL by organising protests and through advocacy and awareness campaigns and by putting pressure on the Lebanese Government to legislate and execute a national body to investigate the fate of the ‘forcibly disappeared’. Over the years, SOLIDE and CFKDL have organised extensive advocacy and lobbying activities and worked with Minister of Justice, MPs, lawyers, the International Centre for Transitional Justice and other NGOs to push for the legislation and execution of the Draft Law for Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons.