The objective of the Civil Society Review is to bring civil society practitioners, experts, activists, and researchers together to develop knowledge, as well as to innovate new tools and practices so as to strengthen Lebanon’s civil society and its voice. The Civil Society Review produces evidence-based research and analysis and disseminates findings and recommendations to promote civic engagement, shape policies, and stimulate debate within civil society spheres in Lebanon.

This first issue of the Civil Society Review reflects the core of Lebanon Support’s mission and mandate to create a space for reflection, collaboration and debate between scholarly research, expertise and activism in Lebanon. Its themes were informed by, if not imposed by, the current problematics that civil society actors have been facing in the past few years in Lebanon, and that are structuring their work. While we are aware of the fetishization of the concept of “civil society”, our approach seeks to introduce a critical and distanced reflection to its underlying contents and implications, and to consider it as a social and political construct in the Lebanese context rather than a given.;