An investigation into the revenues from Lebanon’s seismic data

ENAR

One of the major obstacles that post-war Lebanon has faced is the absence of adequate transparency tools that, if there, would have lead to greater public accountability. Access to information has been limited, and mandatory disclosure mechanisms are verging on nonexistent. Such limitations have encouraged many forms of corruption. Despite the fact that the past five years have seen efforts to provide the public with greater transparency tools—Law 28 (2017) on access to information, Law 83 (2018) on whistle-blower protection, and Law 84 (2018) on enhancing transparency in the petroleum sector—post law scrutiny has shown that the state had little intention of using such tools to promote public accountability and incubate trust amongst the different stakeholders. The October 17th revolution was in part fueled by years of bottled up outrage and frustration over the corrupt and self-serving practices of politicians—Lebanese citizens are demanding more accountability. Our aim at the Lebanese