| \__Memory and documentation |
UMAM Documentation & Research
founded by Lokman Slim and Monika Borgmann
2004
Beirut-based archive and civic research centre in Haret Hreik that collects documents, photographs and testimonies on Lebanon's wars and works on dealing with the past, enforced disappearance, prisons and political assassination. It runs the Hangar exhibition space and several memory websites. |
Memory at Work (Diwan al-Dhakira al-Lubnaniya)
UMAM D&R
UMAM's Arabic-language online 'register of Lebanese memory' with thematic dossiers and essays, including how Lebanese remember 13 April and the memory of Jabal Amel. |
Arab Image Foundation
1997
Beirut-based foundation preserving photographic collections from Southwest Asia, North Africa and the diaspora (1997–2023 acquisitions); new digitised collections are uploaded weekly. |
AUB Libraries - Archives & Special Collections
American University of Beirut
Special collections of the American University of Beirut: manuscripts, photographs, maps, periodicals, audiovisual material and some 10,000 posters, many documenting Lebanon's political history and the war. |
AUB Libraries poster collection
American University of Beirut
1960s–1980s posters; online since 2000s
Collection of about 10,000 posters, whose political holdings document Lebanon and the Arab world, including posters of the parties and militias of the civil war; it was a main source for Maasri's research. |
Signs of Conflict: Political Posters of Lebanon's Civil War
Zeina Maasri
2008 (exhibition); 2012 (website)
Exhibition first shown at Ashkal Alwan's Home Works forum, later developed into an annotated online archive of civil-war posters with related exhibitions and publications. |
| \__The missing and transitional justice |
Fushat Amal - A Space of Hope
ACT for the Disappeared
2016
Online memorial run by ACT for the Disappeared that gathers biographies, photographs and family testimonies of people missing in Lebanon; anyone can submit information. |
ACT for the Disappeared
2010
Lebanese NGO that works with families of people missing since the civil war: it documents cases, maps possible burial sites, and lobbies for the implementation of Law 105/2018. |
Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon
Wadad Halwani and the families (no website; interview)
1982
Families' committee formed in 1982 after Wadad Halwani's radio appeal for the wives and mothers of the abducted; its decades of campaigning led to Law 105/2018 on the missing. The link is a 2024 UN Women interview with Halwani. |
National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared
Law 105/2018 (no website; course on the law)
2018 / 2020
Independent state body created under Law 105 (2018) and appointed in June 2020 to trace the fate of Lebanon's estimated 17,000 missing, locate and exhume burial sites and return remains. The link is a free course session explaining the law and the commission. |
Law No. 105 on Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons (2018)
Lebanese Parliament; English translation
2018
Text of the law passed in November 2018 recognising families' right to know and creating the National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared. |
ICTJ - Lebanon
International Center for Transitional Justice
2008–
International Center for Transitional Justice country page summarising its Lebanon work: mapping past violations, studies on impunity and the missing, support for Law 105, and memory projects such as Badna Naaref. |
Lebanon's Legacy of Political Violence: A Mapping of Serious Violations, 1975-2008
ICTJ (report, 2013)
2013
ICTJ's reference report compiling hundreds of documented massacres, disappearances, assassinations and other grave violations from 1975 to 2008, as a basis for truth-seeking. |
Mapping of Political Violence in Lebanon (1975-2008)
Lebanon Support / CeSSRA, with ICTJ and FES
2021
Interactive map of incidents of political violence and human rights violations from 1975 to 2008, built on ICTJ's mapping research. |
| \__Voices and testimonies |
Fighters for Peace
former combatants of the Lebanese wars
2014
Association of former militia fighters from all sides of the civil war who give testimonies, run walking tours, theatre and dialogue sessions with young people to prevent new violence. |
Maabar
Anthony Tawil and Cédric Kayem (podcast)
2022–2025
Documentary podcast built from more than 130 oral-history interviews about the 1975–1990 war: season 1 on everyday life (2022), season 2 on the journalists who covered the war (2024), season 3 on doctors, firefighters and Red Cross volunteers (2025). |
Le Souffle de Beyrouth
Marine Vlahovic and Samuel Hirsch, Arte Radio (2021)
2021
39-minute radio documentary in which Rana Eid comments on the recordings she has made of Beirut since childhood in the shelters, from the civil war to 2006, the 2019 revolution, the port explosion and the collapse. |
Beyrouth, une ville plus loin
France Culture (2005), with Lokman Slim and Samir Kassir
2005 (rebroadcast in Les Nuits de France Culture)
Two-part documentary on the families of the disappeared, on how those who were children during the war lived the passage to peace, and on Beirut's destruction and reconstruction. |
Lebanese Association for History
2013–
Association of history teachers that trains educators in disciplinary, multi-perspective history teaching, produces classroom resources on the 1975–1990 war, sat on the national curriculum committee and co-organised the 2025 'Hkeeli' commemoration. |
Hijacking and Rescuing History Education in Lebanon
Bassel Akar, Public History Weekly (2020)
2020
Short account of why the unified history textbook promised by the Taif Accord never appeared (a 2000 draft rejected, a 2012 effort halted after youth protests) and how teachers and civil society are changing practice from below. |
| \__Since 2019 |
Beirut 607
memorial to the victims of 4 August 2020
2021–
Online memorial and interactive database that tells the lives of the people killed in the 4 August 2020 port explosion through their relatives' testimonies, with a map of victims, justice updates and 'legal port diaries'. |
Lebanon Unsettled
archive of the October 2019 uprising (LSE)
2023
Web archive placing the October 2019 uprising in a longer history of Lebanese revolts, with a timeline, mapped protest spaces, recorded chants with transcripts, short videos on archiving the revolt and a bibliography. |
They Killed Us from the Inside
Human Rights Watch (report on 4 August 2020, 2021)
2021
Human Rights Watch report tracing official knowledge of the ammonium nitrate stored in the port and the negligence that led to the 4 August 2020 explosion; calls for an international investigation. |
The Beirut Port Explosion
Forensic Architecture (2020)
2020
Digital model of Warehouse 12 and its contents, built from videos and documents, showing how the fire spread before the 4 August 2020 blast; materials released openly. |
Israeli Forces in Lebanon
Airwars (casualty record, 2024-)
2024–
Casualty-recording database of civilian-harm incidents from Israeli strikes in Lebanon since September 2024, including the renewed fighting after the ceasefire collapsed on 2 March 2026. |
| \__Films, theatre and art spaces |
Aflamuna (formerly Beirut DC)
organiser of Ayam Beirut al-Cinemaiya; online screenings
2020
Free online platform for Arab independent films and themed, curated programmes, launched in March 2020 during the pandemic lockdowns; Beirut DC later took Aflamuna as its own name. |
Metropolis Cinema
2006
Beirut art-house cinema association active since July 2006; it screens Lebanese, Arab and international independent films, runs a cinémathèque project and youth programmes, and reopened in a new two-screen venue in Mar Mikhael in 2024. |
Zoukak
theatre company
2006
Theatre collective and venue that has worked steadily on civil-war memory (Perform-Autopsy, Heavens, Stop Calling Beirut) and hosts other artists (Augurs, Suffocated); runs the Sidewalks festival. |
Beit Beirut
the Barakat building on the former Green Line
Opened 28 April 2016
Former residential building on the Green Line used as a sniper position, preserved with its bullet holes and opened as a museum and cultural centre on Beirut's memory; hosted the 'Hkeeli' programme for the war's 50th anniversary. |
Sursock Museum
1961; reopened 2015 and 26 May 2023
Beirut's modern and contemporary art museum; it stayed open through parts of the war, was badly damaged by the 4 August 2020 explosion (about 70% of the building, dozens of works) and reopened in 2023 after restoration. |
| \__Earlier links (2002) |
Memory & Media (avinus.de)
c. 2001
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
UNESCO Courier, December 1999: 'Horreurs d'hier: la mémoire et l'oubli'
1999
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
IFLA 64 (Amsterdam 1998) paper 099-69f: 'Mémoire du Monde'
1998
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
L'Express dossier: 'Liban, une mémoire en souffrance'
c. 2000
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
CEDRATE symposium (psydoc-fr.broca.inserm.fr)
c. 2000
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
'Voilà. Le monde dans la tête' (Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2000)
2000
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
'The Places of Memory' (users.sfera.net/silence)
c. 2001
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
Palestine and Lebanon political posters (AUB Jafet Library, on al-Mashriq)
1997
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
Visual Front: Posters of the Spanish Civil War (UC San Diego)
c. 1998
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
1988
Still online. |
Arab Image Foundation (old address fai.org.lb)
1997
Now at a new address. |
ALBA – Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts
1937
Now at a new address. |
TV5 – Beyrouth special
c. 2002
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
Lebanese Foundation for Permanent Civil Peace – Observatory
c. 1986
The original page is gone; this is an archived copy. |
