A Legal Guide for Victims of the Beirut Port Blast
Why this guide?
This guide is designed for victims of the Beirut Port blast. Due to the multifaceted collapse of the Lebanese state and its failure to properly inform and advise victims of their rights, the Legal Agenda released this guide to provide victims with the basic legal information they require to secure their rights.
What does it include?
This guide focuses on the rights that will require sustained effort to realise and to overcome obstacles. The guide outlines the general principles that underlie the rights of all victims of the August 4 blast, then addresses the central rights being claimed by the victims’ movement in four separate sections:
- Truth and Justice: Outlines the course of the investigation and trial process before the Court of Justice and explains how victims may become parties to the trial, guaranteeing their right to obtain both truth and justice.
- Reconstruction: Provides an overview of the Lebanese state’s plan to protect areas damaged in the blast, and the protections afforded to residents to guarantee their swift return to their places of residence.
- Compensation: Outlines the compensation that victims can demand for damages sustained by the blast, as well as the mechanisms for accessing compensation currently adopted by Lebanese authorities.
- Victims’ associations: Explains the aims and possible forms of victims’ associations.
The guide also includes a Useful Contacts section to facilitate access to official agencies and other relevant organisations.
THIS ENGLISH TRANSLATION IS A SUMMARY OF THE ARABIC GUIDE. FOR FURTHER DETAILS PLEASE REFER TO THE ORIGINAL ARABIC DOCUMENT
Editor: Ghida Frangieh
Researchers: Imad Sayegh, Ghida Frangieh, Lara Maddah, Myriam Mehanna, Nadine Arafat, Nizar Saghieh, Nour Haidar, Youmna Makhlouf
Research assistants: Nour Gharib, and the students from the University of Pennsylvania Law School (Deanna Drenga, Natalie Reynolds, Weilun Qian, Trevor Stankiewicz, Imad Rizkallah, Chloe He, Anne Li, Joelle Hage Boutros)
Copy-editor (Arabic): Lamia Sahili
Copy-editor (English): Sarah Cupler
Translator (into English): Robin Moger
