CSO report on abysmal conditions of women prisons in Lebanon

The Lebanese Democratic Women Gathering (LDWG), Diakonia, Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center and Dar Al Amal jointly organized a press conference to release their assessment report on conditions of women prisoners in Lebanon. Work on the report comes as part of a project entitled, “Promoting Human Rights Policy and Practices in Lebanese Women Prisons” which is financially supported by the European Commission and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). During the press conference the representative of the Commission on Prisons at the Beirut Bar Association (BBA) outlined the work carried out by BBA in support of various human rights issues in the country.  For his part, the representative of Diakonia, Rodolph Jebrail, listed the various achievements of the project in terms of improving the competence of prison authorities and in providing women prisoners with legal and social support in order to help women attain their rights to report on any human right violations.
The report included several recommendations principally that policies should be compatible with the effective law, especially on issues regarding pregnant inmates and babies born in jail, and that women inmates be provided with three regular meals. Manal Zoaiter, on behalf of LDWG highlighted the present practices of prison authorities and the new measures that should be adopted and that will should in line with international standards of human rights. She concluded by saying: “Women in prisons still suffer horrendous violations of their basic human rights and are still subjected to gender-based discrimination and abuses.”
(AL Diyar, As Safir, Feb 13, 2015)