My Nationality is a Right for Me and My Family: The Lebanese authorities are more fatal and discriminatory than the pandemic itself

Every day, our government practices blatant discrimination and racism towards Lebanese women. In every decision it takes to help the male Lebanese citizens, it violates the right of the female Lebanese citizens!
Yesterday morning, the government initiated the distribution of social assistance to the families of students enrolled in public schools in all the Lebanese governorates. This will go on for several days, within the premises of the public schools, in coordination with the principals, who took on the task of communicating with the parents to organize the timings in order to avoid gatherings and preserve the public health in fear of COVID-19. This concern did not prevent the inclusion of names of students and families from Lebanese mothers to provide them with assistance just like the other students from a Lebanese father.
However, My Nationality is a Right for Me and My Family Campaign received a number of complaints from the families of Lebanese women. They were literally told that they would not get any assistance, even if they were among those who filled in the forms that demonstrated that they were eligible for assistance. This is due to one "charge": they are from Lebanese mothers. In order to be "honoured" by this social assistance, they need to be from Lebanese fathers. Consequently, the Lebanese women and their families were deprived from an assistance they deeply needed in this social, economic, and health distress that is affecting everyone as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which consequences did not distinguish between one person and another. However, our authorities, when trying to respond to the pandemic, are discriminating between people and depriving one person and not the other. While the government chose this humiliating approach, there are harmful psychological implications not only for mothers, but for students and children, as a result of exclusion and discrimination between them and other students.
Every day, our authorities demonstrate their injustice and racism, as if pandemics and crises were basedon colour, gender, confession or nationality. But our authorities are founded on discrimination between the sons and daughters of one nation.
The assistance will be distributed in schools by the army units, in application of a decision by the Council of ministers, according to the lists provided by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.
My Nationality is a Right for Me and My Family Campaign condemns any action that discriminates between male and female Lebanese citizens, and demands that the children and families of Lebanese women be treated just as the children and families of Lebanese men, without discrimination or exclusion. It is shameful to see Lebanese women and mothers humiliated in their homeland, Lebanon.
#My _Nationality_is_a_Right_For_Me_and_My_Family #Equal_Treatment

My Nationality is a Right for Me and My Family Campaign
Beirut, 22 April 2020