Women Keeping Lebanon Alive

From the Amel Association center in Haret Hreik, damaged by Israeli attacks, emerges a powerful image of the role women play in holding society together amid war, displacement, economic crisis, and the retreat of the state. From healthcare and education to caregiving and social work, women shoulder the burden of keeping life going.

Omar Nashabe
Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Al-Akhbar Newspaper | Lebanon | Society

Yesterday, I entered the Amel Association center in Haret Hreik, where the place itself spoke more eloquently than words. The windows shattered by the Israeli attacks had been covered with plastic sheeting, some of the rubble had been cleared away, and the center had resumed its work.

There was no waiting for comprehensive reconstruction, nor the luxury of suspending operations until conditions improved. Medical clinics, a pharmacy, a social center, and an educational space were once again supporting the community. Everything had returned to its essential purpose: serving people.

Perhaps this is one of the clearest expressions of humanitarian resistance: the Israeli enemy destroys a place, and people return to rebuild it, reopen it, and bring it back to life. Buildings and windows may be shattered, but the will remains unbroken. The doctor continues treating patients, the pharmacist dispenses medicine, the educator guides a child, and the social worker welcomes an orphan, while the scars of the bombing remain visible on the walls.

At this center, Amel Association held a meeting chaired by its founder, pediatrician Dr. Kamel Mohanna, whose home in Khiam and the adjacent clinic were destroyed by the enemy. The meeting was attended by the women and men responsible for Amel’s centers across Lebanon. One particular scene caught my attention: the overwhelming majority—more than 80 percent—of those in leadership positions in the room were women.

They were women from different professional backgrounds, regions, and communities. Some wore the hijab and others did not; some were Muslim and others Christian. They came from different villages, towns, and cities, and were not united by any single sectarian, regional, or political affiliation. What brought them together was something far more important: conscience, responsibility, and the conviction that every human being deserves assistance and support simply because they are human. This is the most beautiful image Lebanon can offer of itself.

It is unjust to speak of the resilience of Lebanese society without acknowledging that women have been—and continue to be—among its fundamental pillars.

The beautiful Lebanon is the one I saw in that room: differences that exclude no one, and diversity that needs no speeches celebrating it because it is lived naturally every day. What was even more striking, however, was that women were carrying the greater share of this responsibility.

It is unjust to speak of the resilience of Lebanese society without acknowledging that women have been—and continue to be—among its fundamental pillars. During wars and crises, this role becomes even more visible. When people are killed, homes destroyed, villages bombed, families deprived of their livelihoods, and the country fills with displaced people, wounded people, persons with disabilities, and others in need, resilience becomes grueling daily work: securing medicine, following up on the needs of children and older persons, standing beside those who are suffering and devastated, caring for the sick, organizing assistance, and protecting whatever remains of the normal rhythm of life. In all of this, women are on the front lines.

The impact of the continuing Israeli attacks on Lebanon is not limited to those who have been killed or wounded. Hundreds of thousands of people have experienced—or continue to experience—displacement, fear, and the loss of their homes, jobs, schools, or neighborhoods. Families have lost their sources of income; some people have sustained disabilities that will remain with them for life; and villages and towns have suffered widespread destruction. In the South, the Bekaa, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and the capital itself, it was not only buildings that were targeted, but entire lives that people had spent many years building.

In the face of this, women go to their centers every morning to treat people, teach their children, listen to their problems, and search for solutions. There is nothing romantic about this. These women are exhausted too. They have families, fears, needs, and obligations of their own. Some live in areas that have been bombed; some have experienced displacement or the loss of safety; and some suffer, like most Lebanese people, from the economic crisis, collapsing purchasing power, and rising prices. Yet they still come to work.

The accumulation of crises in Lebanon is almost unprecedented: a large-scale and continuing Israeli assault, an exhausted economy, rising unemployment, soaring prices, widespread poverty, the near-total absence of public services, persistent corruption in both public- and private-sector institutions, and an enormous decline in the state’s ability to protect its citizens and meet their basic needs.

Under such conditions, society can easily fragment and collapse. Yet societies do not endure because of government decisions alone. They endure because of an invisible network of people who continue to stand by one another when state institutions are unable—or unwilling—to perform their role.

In Lebanon, women form an essential part of this network: the mother who keeps her family together after displacement; the doctor who welcomes patients as if they were her own children; the nurse who works additional hours; the teacher who tries to protect a child from the psychological consequences of war; the social worker who brings hope into the homes of the poor and devastated; the lawyer who defends an oppressed person as if the case were personally her own; the journalist who documents the truth regardless of the danger; the engineer who inspects damaged buildings with tears glistening in her eyes; and the administrator who struggles to keep an institution operating while everything around it collapses. These are not marginal roles. They constitute society’s human infrastructure.

Traditional discourse in our societies has long portrayed women primarily as caregivers within the family, as if caregiving were secondary to politics, economics, and institutional management. But care is not secondary work. When states fall apart, wars erupt, and institutions retreat, the ability to care for people becomes one of the most important forms of leadership.

What I saw at Amel Association was not women helping men manage an institution. I saw women managing, deciding, organizing, and leading.

Women in Lebanon are not merely half of society; they are the ones who carry the whole of society when it is on the verge of falling. From the home to the school, from the hospital to the social institution, from the university to the courtroom, and from journalism to municipalities and humanitarian organizations, women work every day to prevent this country from collapsing completely.

Their views, social backgrounds, religions, clothing, and affiliations may differ. This is not a problem; it is a source of strength. The Lebanon that deserves to survive is not a Lebanon of sameness, but a Lebanon in which differences are transformed into cooperation.

A true homeland is not merely a country whose flag we raise; it is a country whose people we care for.