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Social IssuesJun 05, 2025
Lebanon’s History Teaching: A Strategy for the Way Forward
- Karim El Mufti
The year 2025 marks fifty years since the start of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war which tore the country apart. The heavy toll of the protracted conflict includes over 150,000 deaths, 17,000 missing and disappeared (official report), 300,000 gravely injured, and more than 900,000 internally displaced persons. To this day, concerned parties in Lebanon continue searching for ways to heal the wounds of the war, address unresolved cases of disappearance, and immunize the next generation against future internal conflict.
It is in this context that the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS), in collaboration with the Forum for Memory and Future (FMF), produced two papers in the fall of 2023, examining key aspects of the post-war healing process, namely the work and challenges facing the National Commission for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared and the unresolved debate over how to address the civil war period in Lebanon's national history curriculum.
Today, LCPS and FMF are publishing the second of these two studies, “Lebanon’s History Teaching: A Strategy for the Way Forward,” by Karim El Mufti. Intended for publication in 2024, it was delayed due to the ongoing war.
Karim El Mufti is a professor and senior researcher in political science and international law with a specialization in human rights. As such, he pioneered Clinical Legal Education in Lebanon through the co-founding of a Human Rights Legal Clinic at the Law Faculty of La Sagesse University, which he directed for more than 14 years. His academic work also features the importance of quality education and the influence of religion through his involvement in the Centre International des Sciences de l’Homme of UNESCO. With 20 years of experience in strategic and legal analysis, his research interests revolve around issues of post-conflict state-building, rule of law, and refugee and migrant protection.