Beirut has been the scene of growing demonstrations starting in summer 2015 in reaction to the government’s disastrous management of waste disposal and treatment tons of rubbish are left on the streets of the country’s major cities. The waste management question has become a catalyst for the rejection of religious sectarian-based solutions. It is therefore normal for protesters to demand the end of the government respectively the sectarian regime. The demands expressed by the protesters for a secular democratic State dedicated to social justice, freedom and equality where people can play an active role in the decisions affecting their lives.

In partnership with the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, the Centre takes on the visualization and organization of a youth conference on the subject "The Lebanese Citizen’s Movement - a Hope for a Change".

During the conference, various questions and point of views have been addressed like

• Is the civil youth movement in Lebanon today a continuation of the history of the popular movement since Independence?
• What are the circumstances of the emergence of the current civil youth movement? What are its goals?
• What are the indicators of its success? Or its shortcoming? Or its failure?
• Does this movement have a certain business strategy? What are the means available? What are the conditions of its success or failure?
• What is the intended change of this phenomenon?
• What are the means to achieve this change?

The goal of the event was to enable the participants to understand the benefit of Citizen's movement that can make a change in the democratic system, to increase participants’ ability to engage in cross-sectarian civic discussion and to encourage them to engage in dialogue about the democratic reform in Lebanon.

Mrs. Maryam Schmidt, Head of the Devision Middle East, North Africa of the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung in Munich has visited Lebanon on 21 - 23 April 2016 and has taken part at the conference for one day.

The last day of the event was reserved for working groups to discuss some issues related to the context of the previous days in order to nourish some level of debate and exchange useful ideas.

The following questions have been discussed:

• What is the reason behind the decline in the proportion of young voters in the parliamentary and municipal elections process?
• How can we create a young political leadership instead of the current tradition political leadership to bring a real change in the Lebanese democratic system?
• The absence of women participation in the in social life, leads to a decline in the living standard and the development rate, how to explain this?

Each working group has set up recommendations that will be submitted to competent authorities and published in the social media.