The second class status of people with disabilities has not changed in Lebanon, seeing as how they are still unable to exercise their civil rights, in particular their right to vote in legislative elections. This is what a report published by Al-Mayadeen website asserted on May 14, one day prior to the Lebanese parliamentary elections, headlined by the question, “What prevents them from obtaining their rights?” The report added that people with disabilities in Lebanon effectively have no place among the crowds that will head to the ballot boxes on May 15: “The latter will not be able to exercise their civil rights in light of the state’s failure to take their demands seriously. During the upcoming elections in Lebanon, this segment…will not have any votes in whichever ballot box.”
Al-Mayadeen, citing a range of experts and reports on the subject, specifically charging that voting centers are overwhelmingly inaccessible for disabled Lebanese and have remained so for decades. As a result, some political “volunteers” essentially collect votes by transferring and carrying people with disabilities to the higher floors of the voting centers where some allegedly try to influence the votes of the people with disabilities that they were carrying up. “On the ground,” Al-Mayadeen noted, “the field survey conducted in 2009 by the Lebanese Union for People with Physical Disabilities (LUPD) regarding the eligibility of the polling centers to host disabled persons (Prepared by M. Bashar Abdul Samad, 5 Parts, 2009), revealed that only four out of 1,669 centers had the minimum level of architectural requirements, allowing the handicapped voter to vote autonomously…The outcome of this field survey has not changed in 14 years.”
Disabled voters have suffered humiliating experiences at every election, explained Sylvana Lakkis, president of LUPD, to the website The New Arab. The 2018 elections were the worst ever for disabled people, who were “treated like crates of potatoes.” Tony Mikhael, legal advisor at the Lebanese Maharat Foundation, agreed, adding that while Lebanon became a signatory of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2007, it never officially ratified the Convention or its optional protocol, something which Mikhael believes “is evidence the state has no intention of implementing these rights… [afterall] the number of polling stations equipped for disabled access can be counted on one hand, as most of them are on the second or third floors, and are impossible for those with disabilities to reach.
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, the report of Hakki Campaign after the election enumerated many violations registered against physically handicapped and disabled persons, mainly the non-existence of parking spaces for disabled persons near the polling centers, the existence of obstacles that prevented their access to elevators or stairs, the fact that some suffered from power shortages in the elevator, and the removal of the instructional signs directed at disabled persons. The violations also included the way people with disabilities were treated, seeing as how the security forces did not facilitate the passage of their vehicles, allow them to park near the polling centers, or allow them to be accompanied by an aide. In addition, observers from the campaign noticed that some disabled voters were forced to vote outside the curtain.
However, the preliminary statement of the European Union Election Observation Mission in Lebanon provided a more nuanced view when it comes to the participation of disabled persons in the May 15 elections, indicating that some progress had in fact been made since previous elections: “The exercise of political rights of persons with disabilities is still not fully guaranteed in practice,” the statement clarified, adding (English version) that the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities “took, for the first time, the decision to place polling stations on the ground floor of 103 schools in order to facilitate the access of PWD… [but] even if 51 percent of the observed polling stations were situated on the ground floor, only 43 percent were accessible to people with reduced mobility. In the absence of Braille ballot papers, visually impaired voters continued to be limited in the independent exercise of their right to vote. Voter education in sign language was insufficient, although all but one of the 13 videos shared by the SCE on Facebook were doubled with sign language. In 14 percent of the visited polling stations, EU observers noted persons with reduced mobility being carried to their polling station and offered inappropriate assistance.”
Fact Check Assessment: Partially True
We asked the Legal Analyst at the EU Election Observation Mission in Lebanon, Smaranda Săndulescu, to clarify the extent of the problem, to which she replied: “Reading the preliminary report of the EU mission clearly shows that 43% of the voting centers were easily accessible. We also noticed in some cases that people were being carried inside the voting centers because they were inaccessible. This means there were some difficulties and problems in certain cases.”
As such, while Al-Mayadeen’s report admirably details the hardships and unfair practices to which many disabled Lebanese are subjected during elections, there has in fact been a very modest degree of progress in making E-Day more accessible and secure for disabled voters, certainly more than Maharat’s legal advisor pointed out just before the election (“the number of polling stations equipped for disabled access can be counted on one hand”). Still, there is clearly an unacceptably large number of polling centers that remain inaccessible or accessible with difficulty, 57% according to the European Union. Furthermore, the absence of a Braille ballot and hearing impaired assistance remains an extensive problem that also significantly prevents some Lebanese from “obtaining their rights.”
