Lebanon commission to search for people missing in civil war

The Lebanese parliament this week approved a law on the formation of a commission to look into fate of 17,000 people missing in Lebanese civil war.

This law authorises an independent national commission to collect information about the missing people, getting DNA and exhuming graves, Lebanese Addustour newspaper reported.

Activists and families of the missing people have been calling for the formation of such commission for years.

“This law didn’t come to create new conflicts but to end old ones,” Wadad Halwani, founder of the families of the missing committee was reported saying by the New York Times.

Halwani, whose husband was kidnapped in 1982, added: “Our forgiveness is not personal. It is a humane message. We are trading accountability for the crimes of the past for a leap […] toward the future.”

According to the New York Times, the law aims to regulate the flow of information, guaranteeing “the right environment” for those who choose to come forward “so we can turn the page of the past together, close this file and end our sorrows”.

The Lebanese civil war took place between 1975 and 1990 and claimed approximately 120,000 lives.

Read: Israel committed ‘550 violations’ against Lebanon