Kulluna Irada acts towards strengthening state Sovereignty and achieving Rule of Law and Good Governance in Lebanon as essential guarantees of human rights and as a foundation for a modern, secure, efficient, sustainable and just state.

 

Our Sovereignty, Rule of Law, and Good Governance initiative is based on six main pillars:

 

• The consolidation of full and exclusive state Sovereignty over territory, institutions, arms, borders, and decision-making

 

• Legal certainty, legal supremacy, law enforcement and equality before the law • Fair, legitimate, effective and sustainable institutions and policies

 

• Transparency and access to information

 

• Accountability

 

• Citizen participation

 

Kulluna Irada determines its key policy issues or areas of action and designs its initiatives around these cross-cutting principles, taking into account their level of priority and the added value our organization can bring to each issue.

The fiscal and external imbalances of the Lebanese economy have led to a financial crisis with a traumatic impact on the Lebanese social fabric. Lebanon is now facing a triple crisis: deficit in the balance of payments, sovereign default, and banking crisis. The indicators are alarming across the board and call for an urgent and comprehensive crisis management plan which launches the needed structural reforms, debt restructuring and financial sector restructuring, with a fair sharing of the burden and strong social safety nets.

 

In this context, Kulluna Irada seeks to promote the swift development of an economic and financial rescue plan for Lebanon, based on the principles of social justice and economic efficiency. We believe it is of utmost emergency to review the economic, monetary and fiscal model that has led Lebanon towards financial collapse. The cost of the crisis is already very high and time has come to engage in structural reforms rather than buy time with no clear strategy except the perpetuation of a power structure based on clientelism, corruption and misallocation of public resources.

Kulluna Irada is supporting and partnering with the Lebanese Oil and Gas Initiative (LOGI) in order to influence the path of the oil and gas sector which is a potential game changer for Lebanon on multiple levels (governance, economy, fiscal, etc.).

 

The challenge for Lebanon is to make sure its nascent oil and gas sector is properly managed, in order to avoid falling in the resource curse. This is all the more important that Lebanon has suffered from an acute form of Dutch disease since the early 1990s, due to massive sustained exogenous capital inflows including record levels of remittances fueled by regional petro-dollar income. Now that this flawed economic model has led the country to a financial collapse at a very high social cost, it is crucial to identify a macroeconomic strategy to get out of this rent-based economy. This new vision is needed before a new source of rent flows in to regenerate a model that has had a catastrophic impact on the Lebanese social fabric: very low competitiveness leading to unemployment and emigration and a world record in social inequalities. Good governance and transparency at every level, including implementation of beneficial ownership principles, are also key to avoid perpetuating corruption and elite capture of resources.

As part of its work towards achieving rule of law and good governance in Lebanon, Kulluna Irada has partnered with The Legal Agenda to launch the Initiative for Judicial Independence and Transparency. We consider that any serious reforms aiming at fighting corruption, instating the rule of law and building institutions in Lebanon should start with judicial reforms.

 

We are therefore lobbying for the adoption of the law proposal for judicial independence and transparency put forward by The Legal Agenda and the Civil Coalition for Judicial Independence and Transparency, and signed by 9 Members of Parliament. We thereby seek to elevate public debate and increase awareness and knowledge on the role of the judiciary and the need to reinforce the independence of tribunals and judicial institutions. We also seek to push for a participatory mechanism in the elaboration of all law proposals and to reaffirm the need for civil society participation in reform proposals and debates in Lebanon.

 

Under the Initiative for Judicial Independence and Transparency, we are also supporting the work of The Legal Agenda towards developing and lobbying for law proposals targeted at improving the laws and regulations governing different branches of the judiciary.

The power sector epitomizes Lebanon’s governance failures. While electricity is one of the most basic needs that should be provided to citizens, nearly 30 years after the end of the war, production of electricity in Lebanon is one of the costliest in the world and the most polluting. Furthermore, while it is a state monopoly, its huge deficit is one of the biggest contributors to the sovereign debt. Thus, putting the sector on the right track is one of Kulluna Irada's main priorities for the country. This entails not only to produce electricity 24/7, but to also make sure it is produced at the lowest cost for Lebanon. A transparent decision making and procurement process is the only guarantee to achieve such a goal, yet, we are very far from it.