Every year on August 30, the world observes the International Day of the Disappeared. On this day, human rights organizations draw attention to the fate of the people who got abducted and were never found.
Lebanon also observes this day since there are 17,000 Lebanese people went missing during the civil war. Their fate is yet unknown, and no one attempted to open the case and make investigations. Many Lebanese families have been waiting to hear some news about their missing loved ones for decades.
@actdisappearedToday, 100 people gathered at the Gibran Khalil Gibran Garden to commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared. The protesters wrote the names of the missing people on scarves and marched to the Parliament. They condemned the government’s failure to locate the victims.
The Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared and Act for the Disappeared organize events every year to spread awareness and remind the government about the missing people.
However, there’s still hope. Act for the Disappeared submitted a draft law that aims to establish a commission to uncover the fate of the disappeared. It has been recently submitted to the parliament. The families are waiting for the government to pass it.
The families have the right to know about the fate of their loved ones. They have been waiting for many years, but that doesn’t mean that their pain is gone. With every day that goes by, they wonder what their lives would have been like if their child, sibling, or parent didn’t go missing. We as a community should stand along with these families whose sufferings did not end when the civil war ended.