2022 Winners & Shortlists

Cultural / Context information for the jury

Our campaign began as close to the people as possible- on ground. On day one of UN’s 16 Days of Activism, women survivors stood in front of key Beirut locations holding banners with messages hammering the dichotomy of women in Lebanon choosing between death (from the country’s state) and another kind of death (from gender-based-violence (GBV)). One woman stood in front of a supermarket to parallel the frighteningly high prices and rising GBV cases. Another woman stood at a pharmacy to draw likeness between dying from a lack of medication to dying from abuse. A third woman stood in front of Lebanon’s electricity company, Electricite Du Liban, to parallel a lack of electricity to the rape cases that never get to see the light. By covering ground in Lebanon’s capital and amplifying the activation through social media, the campaign and its message turned into the talk of the town.

Write a short summary of what happens in the digital or ambient execution or campaign.

In 2021, the Lebanese watched their currency plummet in value, the streets go dark due to lack of electricity, their infants cry because milk was scarce, people rioting in front of pharmacies in the absence of medication and queuing for hours to partially fill their vehicles with gasoline - all while GBV levels soared. What’s even more absurd is that GBV’s rise still lands the issue at the bottom of the “priority list of problems.” Accordingly, Abaad conducted a survey on gender-based violence in Lebanon to better understand the reality on the ground. The results show that: 96% of young girls and women residing in Lebanon who have experienced domestic violence in 2021 stated that they had never reported it- putting themselves at the backseat relative to more life-threatening matters, such as food and medication. The mission became to cement women’s safety as equal a priority as any other issue.