Fighting Amnesia: Ways to Uncover the Truth about Lebanon's Missing

After a 15-year conflict characterized by mass violations of human rights, the Lebanese state and society have favored amnesia over truth seeking. This has marginalized the victims, in particular the relatives of thousands of missing or forcibly disappeared persons. The 2007 decision by the UN Security Council to create a Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), tasked exclusively with trying suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and other politically motivated assassinations, has fuelled perceptions of selective justice. This article outlines possible strategies for taking advantage of changed circumstances in Lebanon, including the future STL, in order to implement the internationally guaranteed right to truth for families of the missing. The author examines recent regional practices and, drawing from the experiences of Morocco and Cyprus, argues that given the strong constraints in Lebanon, the priority, at least initially, should be to establish the truth of what happened and not the prosecution or even naming of culprits.