Dar el Amal and the social reintegration of women prisoners

In partnership with the Swedish Organization for International Development, Diakonia, Dar el Amal Association organized a seminar last Saturday for employees and administrative staff in the private sector in Zahleh and the Beqaa on the social reintegration of released women prisoners in society. The event held at the premises of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Zahleh was organized in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs and the General Directorate of Security Forces. In her opening address, Dar el Amal officer, Huda Qara, pointed out that the association has since 1996 been providing the three main women prisons in Baabda, Tripoli and Zahleh with the necessary equipment, and the women inmates with the social, medical, legal and mental support they needed. The association, Qara stated, arranges educational and professional training workshops to help those women acquire the skills they need for post-prison work life. She concluded by drawing the attention of the government, as well as the private and public sectors, to their obligation and role in the protection of human rights without any form of discrimination. For his part, the commander of Zahleh jail, Lt. Colonel Imad Beydun, described the painful reality of women prisons in Lebanon as a result of the overcrowded old buildings that lack proper recreational spaces, in addition to the shortage of personnel, apparatus and adequate funding. During the seminar, the owner and director of Shomu3 shop, Rana Salameh Kfuri, who teaches women inmates the art of decoration, spoke about her experience in this field. “A profession is on the one hand, the beginning of recuperation of the woman inmate’s life and her liberator from the past misery during imprisonment as well as a tool for empowerment, on the other,” Kfuri maintained. To close, two inmates gave live testimonies of their suffering after their release and the stigmatization and rejection by society that did not give them the opportunity of finding a decent job. (L’Orient Le Jour, October 22, 2016)