Homosexuality is part of the natural spectrum of human identity and is not a disease, a disorder, or an illness to be treated or “fixed.” However, there is a plethora of evidence documenting the challenges that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people experience daily as a result of discrimination, rejection, and stigma. Sexual orientation…
Financial barriers stand in the way of breast cancer screening
“If I am diagnosed with breast cancer, my husband would need to sell our house to pay the medical expenses,” says Hanaa, a 52-year-old woman from Abba, south Lebanon. Hanaa worries about not being able to afford the cost of breast cancer-related tests and treatment. Likewise, Zeina, a 45-year-old from Mina, north Lebanon, says, “We…
Blood donation in Lebanon
Anyone active in the Lebanese social media bubble will have seen the all too frequent posts, shared on behalf of family or friends, urgently calling for volunteers to donate a specific blood type at a specific hospital. What people may not realize is that the blood they are being desperately asked to donate might not…
Lebanon, lend us your ears
The exciting world of audio storytelling remains relatively unexplored in the Middle East today, despite the region’s reputation for masterful storytellers. While podcasting as a medium is rapidly growing in the US and Europe, many radio stations in Lebanon and across the Arab world have yet to join this trend and produce innovative content. Two…
The impetus for change
Shareholder activism has experienced a revival and is now growing in influence globally as an effective tool to transform companies by unlocking share price value and improving their strategic vision and governance tactics. The phenomenon of shareholder activism is not new. When it started back in the 1980s, it sparked numerous controversies due to the…
Lebanon’s housing authority to restart subsidization scheme
How far will LL100 billion go? That was the main question Executive posed to Rony Lahoud, head of Lebanon’s public housing authority, the Public Corporation for Housing (PCH). While there are still variables to be calculated, at the time of this interview in late October, Lahoud suggested that almost two thirds of the demand for…
A long time in the making
The PPP law, formally known as Law 48 Regulating Public Private Partnerships, was first proposed as a draft by Cabinet in 2007. It was not until September 2017 that it was passed by Parliament and published in the Official Gazette. In other words, it took lawmakers ten years to pass the PPP law. Back in…
Interview with Ziad Hayek, Secretary General of the High Council of Privatization and PPP
One observation that the World Bank’s latest economic monitor publication for the Middle East and North Africa conveyed to its faithful readers was that the internet infrastructure in MENA countries needs to be brought up to speed in order to facilitate better transitions into the digital economy. Published in early October, the monitor highlighted the…
The curious case of Assad Barakat
There is a thin line between fact and fiction in discussions of the Triple Frontier, a border area between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil that is rumored to be a Hezbollah hotspot. More than one year has passed since US President Donald Trump stood on the White House lawn and promised an answer to the “menace”…
‘America First’ is a risk to Lebanon and the Middle East
Last month marked the 35th anniversary of the deadliest attack against US forces since World War II: the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983 that killed over three hundred people, including 241 US military personnel. The official US line now is that elements of what would later become Hezbollah,…