The president, who is elected to a six-year term by the parliament, appoints the prime minister after consulting with the parliament. The president and prime minister choose the cabinet, which holds most formal executive power. According to long-standing agreements on sectarian power-sharing, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament must be a Shiite Muslim.

The parliament has failed to install a prime minister and cabinet or elect a president since May 2022, leaving these positions vacant after the mandate of former President Michel Aoun ended that October. Lebanon has continued to operate under a caretaker government led by former Prime Minister Najib Mikati since former President Aoun’s 2022 departure.

Members of the 128-seat National Assembly are elected for four-year terms using a system of multimember districts with sectarian quotas.

In the 2022 elections, a bloc led by Hezbollah and its allies—including Christian factions linked to then-President Michel Aoun—lost its parliamentary majority, but it remained the largest grouping with a total of 61 seats. The Sunni-led Future Movement, which had long headed a rival bloc of Muslim and Christian factions, boycotted the elections, contributing to a number of shifts in the makeup of the new assembly. The Lebanese Forces party, a Christian ally of the Future Movement, made significant gains at the expense of the Aoun-backed Free Patriotic Movement, and a group of independent candidates associated with the country’s 2019 reformist protest movement captured 13 seats.

While the elections were conducted peacefully and were free and fair in many respects, vote buying was rampant, observers from the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections reported numerous procedural irregularities, and the electoral framework retained fundamental structural flaws associated with the sectarian political system. Turnout was 49 percent overall.

Municipal elections, initially scheduled for May 2022, have been repeatedly delayed, including in April 2024, when the parliament voted to postpone the elections until no later than May 2025.

Lebanon does not have an independent electoral commission; instead, the Interior Ministry oversees elections. Parliamentary seats are divided among major religious communities under a constitutional formula that does not reflect their current demographic weight. While seat allocations have been adjusted through political agreements over the years, there has been no official census in Lebanon since the 1930s, prior to independence. The electoral framework is inclusive and supports pluralism, but it is the product of bargaining among established leaders and tends to entrench the existing sectarian and communalist political system.

The 2017 electoral law introduced proportional representation and preferential voting, and improved opportunities for diaspora voting. However, the rules for redistricting and seat allocation still favored incumbent parties. The law sharply raised registration fees for candidates as well as spending caps for campaigns, while allowing private organizations and foundations to promote coalitions and candidates, effectively increasing the advantages of wealthier groups and individuals.

Citizens are formally free to organize in different political groupings, and scores of parties compete in practice. While parties do rise and fall based on their performance and voters’ preferences, most of Lebanon’s political parties are vehicles for an established set of communal leaders who benefit from patronage networks, greater access to financing, and other advantages of incumbency.

The elites who dominate Lebanese politics include traditional leaders, military veterans, former militia commanders, and wealthy businessmen. Under the country’s power-sharing system, none of the parties they control consistently behave as opposition groups. Consolidation of power among political elites also hampers intraparty competition.

The political parties and alliances that prevailed before the 2017 electoral system reform have largely maintained their positions, benefiting from advantages under laws they shaped, and also using intimidation, social pressure, and propaganda to marginalize new political forces. However, in the 2022 parliamentary elections, independent candidates associated with the country’s 2019 reformist protest movement won 13 seats after campaigning against the established parties, which they held responsible for decades of corruption and mismanagement that culminated in the current economic crisis.

A variety of forces that are not democratically accountable—including entrenched patronage networks, religious institutions, the heavily armed militias of sectarian factions such as Hezbollah, and competing foreign powers—use a combination of financial incentives and intimidation to exert influence on Lebanese voters and political figures.

Religion plays a significant role in Lebanese politics, and the country’s ruling political parties are largely organized based on religious affiliation rather than social or economic policy. The 2022 elections featured credible allegations of corruption, widespread vote buying, and analyses pointing to the role of establishment parties’ patronage networks in mobilizing or incentivizing voters. Independent candidates were reportedly harassed or physically threatened by supporters of the dominant political parties in their districts.

Lebanon officially recognizes 18 religious communities, and the political system ensures that nearly all these groups are represented, though not according to their actual shares of the population. Individuals who are not, or do not wish to be, affiliated with the recognized groups are effectively excluded. Citizens with disabilities do not have adequate access to polling places or alternative voting systems. Members of the military and citizens who have been naturalized for less than 10 years cannot vote. The country’s large refugee population, including Syrian refugees and residents of Palestinian refugee camps, are not eligible to acquire citizenship and have no political rights.

Women formally have the same political rights as men. In practice, women remain marginalized due to religious restrictions and societal discrimination. The 2022 elections continued a pattern of gradual increases in women’s participation: 8 women were elected to serve in the parliament, up from 6 in 2018. Women candidates were far less likely than men to receive media coverage during the campaign, and they were reportedly more likely to be the targets of violent speech on social media. LGBT+ people have little political representation.

When the government can develop policies, they tend to be the result of negotiation among the country’s dominant political figures, regardless of formal titles and positions. The legislature generally facilitates these policies rather than serving as an independent institutional check on the government. The government’s authority is also limited in practice by the power of autonomous militant groups like Hezbollah and foreign states with interests in Lebanon.

Over the past decade, the country has experienced recurring episodes of political deadlock regarding elections, government formation, and the selection of a president, disrupting ordinary executive functions. The government assumed caretaker status after the 2022 parliamentary elections, and the presidency has remained vacant since the expiration of Aoun’s term that October.

Political and bureaucratic corruption is widespread, and patronage networks generally operate unchecked. Anticorruption laws are loosely enforced, in part because institutions such as the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) lack adequate funding and regulatory support. When law enforcement bodies do act, the cases tend to be selective or politicized. Chronic corruption has affected state-owned companies and utilities, contributing to poor service delivery and routine electricity blackouts.

Political leaders and government officials often operate behind closed doors, outside of state institutions, and with little regard for formal procedures. State expenditures remain irregular, with few mechanisms for effective oversight. Although civil society groups have some ability to influence pending policies or legislation and may, along with the media, discuss proposals that have been made public, their influence is often contingent on participation in opaque processes. The National Assembly enacted the Right to Access to Information (RATI) Law in 2017. Despite the introduction of implementation measures in 2020 and the passage of amendments to streamline access to information in 2021, compliance remains inconsistent.

Following the 2020 Beirut port explosion, Lebanese officials responded with opacity and selective use of emergency powers. An investigation into the incident has been repeatedly stalled and obstructed, including by former Prosecutor General Ghassan Oweidat. In January 2024, the suspension of arrest warrants for two former ministers drew condemnation from international organizations as a major setback for justice.

Since 2019, the country has suffered one of the worst economic crises in history, with a precipitous currency collapse underscoring concerns about transparency at the central bank and accountability for years of mismanagement. Riad Salameh, central bank governor since 1993, was charged with illegal enrichment and money laundering in 2022 and left office in 2023. Salameh was arrested in Lebanon in September 2024 and remained in jail as of December.

Press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed but inconsistently upheld. While the country’s media are among the most open and diverse in the region, nearly all outlets depend on the patronage of political parties, wealthy individuals, or foreign powers, and consequently practice some degree of self-censorship. Books, movies, plays, and other artistic works are subject to censorship, especially when the content involves politics, religion, sex, or Israel, and artists deemed controversial by the government or major religious groups face official interference. It is a criminal offense to criticize or defame the president or security services. Authorities sometimes use such laws to harass and detain journalists, and those detained are often forced to sign pledges to refrain from writing content viewed as defamatory by the government.

In 2022, the Samir Kassir Foundation, a Lebanese rights group, reported that more than 800 violations against journalists were recorded between 2016 and 2022, including harassment and arbitrary detention. In June 2024, a parliamentarian and former judge filed a lawsuit against journalist Azza al-Hajj Hassan on charges of libel and defamation for writing an article about politicians’ partnerships with bankers.

Since October 2023, heightened tensions along Lebanon’s border with Israel have endangered media personnel in the area. Israeli military strikes in Lebanon in 2024 killed three reporters and injured several others in the southern border area. In October, Lebanese security forces detained Lebanese Syrian journalist Alia Mansour, deputy editor in chief of NOW Lebanon, for several hours after a social media account impersonating Mansour allegedly interacted with Israeli social media accounts.

Authorities have failed to protect the media from violence or intimidation by members of political, religious, and other influential groups. Both security forces and supporters of political parties have attacked reporters covering protests. Journalists have experienced harassment and threats of violence online.

Despite the legal and practical obstacles, many journalists have been able to report on sensitive topics such as state corruption, elite malfeasance, and the behavior of armed factions like Hezbollah. However, the financial viability of their work has been threatened by the economic collapse.

The constitution protects freedom of conscience, and the state does not typically interfere with the practice or expression of religious faith or nonbelief. While blasphemy is a criminal offense, enforcement varies and is generally lax. Individuals may face societal pressure to express faith or allegiance to a confessional community. Leaders and members of different communities discourage proselytizing by other groups.

Academic freedom is generally unimpaired. Individuals are mostly free to select subjects for research and disseminate their findings. However, various laws and customary standards—including restrictions on defamation, blasphemy, and work or opinions related to Israel—limit debate on certain issues. The state does not engage in extensive political indoctrination through education, though religious and other nonstate entities do seek to reinforce communal identities and perspectives.

Private discussion and public expression of personal views on political and other controversial topics have been increasingly inhibited in recent years. Repressive laws that criminalize defamation or otherwise restrict speech remain on the books, and individuals sometimes face police questioning, arrests, short detentions, or fines if they criticize the government, the military, foreign heads of state, or other powerful entities. Noncitizens, including refugees and migrant workers, have fewer legal protections and may be especially reluctant to engage in speech that could draw the attention of the security services.

Lebanese authorities regularly monitor social media and electronic communications—including those of prominent individuals such as politicians, dissidents, and journalists, as well as LGBT+ people. Security personnel have reportedly infiltrated the social media groups of activists and protesters in recent years.

Authorities also fail to protect people from nonstate actors, such as political parties or militant groups and their supporters, that may monitor and punish them for expressing critical opinions.

The authorities generally respect the right to assemble, which is protected under the constitution, and people routinely gather without permits or coordination with security services in practice. Demonstrators are generally able to protest against government dysfunction and the financial crisis, but such events have often featured violence by authorities, political parties, militia groups, and civilian participants, and summoning by the judicial police.

Demonstrations held during 2024 were generally allowed to proceed without undue interference. However, in 2023, peaceful protesters—gathered in Beirut to condemn restrictions on fundamental human rights—were violently attacked by dozens of men who were reportedly linked to religious extremist groups. Police and security forces at the scene largely failed to protect demonstrators; in some cases, members of the security forces harassed and assaulted demonstrators and reporters.

Noncitizens, LGBT+ people, and other marginalized groups face greater restrictions on their freedom to assemble in practice. In 2022, the interior minister issued an order to prevent gatherings that “promote homosexuality,” despite rulings by the country’s top administrative court that such actions constituted an infringement on freedom of expression.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) continue to operate with some autonomy, but must comply with the Law on Associations—which has not been comprehensively overhauled since its enactment in 1909—and other laws relating to labor, finance, and immigration. NGOs must also register with the Interior Ministry, which may oblige them to undergo an approval process and can investigate a group’s founders and staff.

NGOs sometimes face bureaucratic obstruction or intimidation by security services, depending on their mission or initiatives. Groups that target or are led and staffed by Syrian refugees are susceptible to scrutiny and interference. The operation of pro–LGBT+ groups has also been hindered as Lebanese authorities have cracked down on LGBT+ rights.

In late 2024, numerous Israeli military strikes and incursions in Lebanon and along the Lebanon-Syria border crossing disrupted the work of humanitarian relief organizations and impeded their ability to effectively function, particularly in southern Lebanon.

Score Change: The score declined from 3 to 2 due to the government’s continued crackdown on LGBT+ activism and the grave deterioration of the country’s security situation, which have both affected the ability of NGOs to operate freely and effectively.

Individuals may establish, join, and leave trade unions and other professional organizations. However, the Labor Ministry has broad authority over the formation of unions, union elections, and the administrative dissolution of unions. The state regulates collective bargaining and strikes. The Council of Ministers approved a modest increase to the public sector minimum wage after employees held strikes in February 2024.

Public employees, agricultural workers, and household workers are not protected by the labor code and have no legal right to organize, though they have formed unrecognized representative organizations. While noncitizen legal residents may join unions under the law, migrant workers have fewer union rights, and large numbers of refugees lack legal status or the right to work.

Many unions are linked to established political parties and serve as tools of influence for political leaders. However, activists affiliated with the 2019 protest movement have successfully challenged incumbent forces in recent elections within some unions and professional associations.

Lebanon’s judiciary is not independent. Political leaders exercise significant influence over judicial appointments, jurisdiction, processes, and decisions, which are also affected by corruption and the undue influence of other prominent people.

Hezbollah, its political allies, and other officials implicated in the 2020 Beirut port explosion case have repeatedly sought to impede the investigation into the explosion, pushing to replace the judges leading the investigation, including Tarek Bitar. In 2023, Bitar reopened the investigation, charging a number of prominent officials, including former Prime Minister Hassan Diab and then-Prosecutor General Ghassan Oweidat, with crimes related to the explosion. Within days, Oweidat filed charges against Bitar and released 17 suspects being held in relation to the case. Oweidat retired in February 2024 and Judge Jamal Hajjar became acting prosecutor general. No decision on the case was reached during 2024. Numerous Lebanese and international rights organizations have asked the United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR) to support an independent investigation into the blast.

Due process is subject to a number of impediments, including violations of defendants’ right to counsel and extensive use of lengthy pretrial detention. Due process guarantees are particularly inadequate in the country’s exceptional courts, including the military courts, whose judges do not require a background in law and are authorized to try civilians and juveniles in security-related cases. In practice, military courts have asserted jurisdiction over cases involving human rights activists and protesters in addition to those focused on alleged spies and militants.

The Internal Security Forces (ISF), Lebanon’s national police, may ask individuals to remove controversial online content or sign nonrepetition pledges overseen by judges. In 2024, at least three individuals were reportedly summoned without being informed of the allegations against them prior to their court hearings.

Residents of southern Lebanon have lived with the risk of land-mine detonation since the 1975–90 civil war, and armed militias, terrorist groups, and criminal organizations continue to undermine security in the country. The organizers of past political violence generally enjoy impunity.

After almost a year of cross-border shelling and other combat between Israeli and Hezbollah forces along Lebanon’s southern border, the Israeli military escalated its air strikes across Lebanon in September 2024. On two consecutive days that month, Israeli intelligence operatives simultaneously detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon, killing dozens of people and injuring over 3,000. Israeli officials said the attacks were designed to target members of Hezbollah.

In October, the Israeli military began a ground invasion of Lebanon. The Israeli military said it was intended to further suppress Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks, and allow Israelis displaced by the attacks to return to their homes in northern Israel. In addition to Hezbollah fighters and assets, Israeli forces reportedly struck United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) posts and injured several peacekeepers, and some human rights organizations have suggested that Israeli forces knowingly or indiscriminately carried out strikes that killed civilians. In November, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 226 health care workers and patients had been killed and 199 injured during the conflict in Lebanon since October 2023.

A US-mediated ceasefire took effect in November 2024, with the Lebanese Armed Forces subsequently deploying to southern Lebanon with UNIFIL. However, hostilities persisted through the end of the year, particularly in the form of Israeli military shelling, air strikes, and border incursions into southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese government said in December that more than 4,000 people had been killed and more than 16,000 had been injured by Israeli forces since October 2023, with the majority of casualties occurring after the escalation in hostilities in September 2024. In October 2024, authorities said 1.2 million people had been displaced by the Israeli offensive.

Prisons and detention centers are badly overcrowded and poorly equipped, and the use of torture by law enforcement, military, and state security personnel continues despite the passage of antitorture legislation and the creation of institutional mechanisms to halt the practice. Amnesty International reported in 2023 that the number of deaths among prisoners in Ministry of Interior–run detention centers had significantly increased in recent years.

Score Change: The score declined from 2 to 0 because an escalation in fighting between the Israeli military and Hezbollah since late 2023 had reportedly killed more than 4,000 people, wounded more than 14,000 others, and displaced over a million Lebanese civilians.

The country’s legal system is meant to protect members of recognized confessional communities against mistreatment by the state, but groups have engaged in discriminatory behavior toward one another in practice, and people who do not belong to a recognized community have difficulty obtaining official documents, government jobs, and other services.

Women face discrimination in wages, benefits, and societal standards and practices, and they are barred from certain types of employment.

Anti-LGBT+ rhetoric from religious leaders, politicians, and media personalities has noticeably increased in recent years. LGBT+ people face official and societal discrimination and harassment. A criminal code provision barring same-sex sexual relations remains in force, and people who violate this law risk a one-year prison sentence.

More than 1.5 million Syrians resided in Lebanon as of 2024. However, only about 768,350 were officially registered as refugees by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as of September, as the government has barred the agency from registering new Syrian refugees since 2015. Some reports indicate that a number of Syrian refugees returned to Syria after the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December. Another approximately 300,000 refugees have reportedly returned to Syria due to the Israeli military’s ongoing airstrikes in Lebanon.

Refugees have faced arbitrary arrests, harassment, and discrimination; most live in poverty, due in part to limitations on their employment options. The government has also enforced housing regulations to compel Syrian refugees to destroy their informal camps. In May 2024, Lebanese authorities adopted measures that make it more difficult for Syrians to settle their legal status. About 479,000 Palestinian refugees are registered in Lebanon, though only about 210,000 actually live there. Many reside in 12 designated refugee camps and are restricted from 39 professions, contributing to widespread poverty, unemployment, and underemployment. Ahead of the 2024–25 school year, local authorities attempted to enforce restrictions that could deny tens of thousands of refugee children access to education.

Citizens enjoy constitutional and legal rights to freedom of movement. With few formal restrictions, they are able to travel within Lebanon. Nevertheless, citizens find it extremely difficult to transfer official places of residence for voting purposes. They also face de facto sectarian boundaries and militia checkpoints in some areas. The hostilities between Hezbollah and the Israeli military in 2024 impeded freedom of movement for residents who were unable to evacuate.

Noncitizens are subject to much harsher restrictions on movement. Many Palestinians classified as refugees live in designated camps, and access to those areas is controlled and often constrained by Lebanese security services. Many Syrian refugees live in informal camps or smaller settlements, and are subject to curfews and other obstacles to movement. In May 2024, Lebanese authorities reduced the categories under which Syrian refugees can apply for residency, further limiting their ability to seek employment; local governments have also implemented new restrictions and evicted Syrian tenants.

Migrant workers face severe restrictions on movement under a sponsorship system that revokes their residency rights if they are dismissed by their designated employers. Employers often confiscate migrant workers’ passports, further reducing their autonomy.

Lebanese law protects citizens’ rights to own property and operate private businesses, but powerful groups and individuals sometimes engage in land-grabbing and other infringements without consequence, and business activity is impaired by bureaucratic obstacles and corruption.

Refugees, including longtime Palestinian residents, have few property rights. Women have weaker property rights than men under the religious codes that govern inheritance and other personal status issues in Lebanon, and they often face family pressure to transfer property to male relatives.

Because the religious codes and courts of each confessional community determine personal status law in Lebanon, people’s rights regarding marriage, divorce, and child custody depend on their affiliation, though women are typically at a disadvantage compared with men. The incidence of child marriage has reportedly increased in recent years, particularly among refugee populations. Partners seeking to enter an interfaith marriage often travel abroad, as Lebanon recognizes civil marriages performed elsewhere. Women cannot pass Lebanese citizenship to non-Lebanese spouses or children of non-Lebanese fathers. Incidents of gender-based violence against women and girls have reportedly increased in recent years.

Same-sex marriage remains illegal in Lebanon. Transgender people have some legal precedent allowing them to live publicly based on their gender identity.

Citizens’ communal affiliation can either enhance or restrict their economic opportunities in a given area, company, or public-sector entity, depending on which group is in a dominant position. Individuals must also contend with political patronage and clientelism, layered on top of communally enabled corruption, in the public and private sectors.

All residents of Lebanon have faced hardship amid the economic crisis that emerged in 2019, featuring rampant inflation, currency devaluation, import shortages, food insecurity, and a sharp rise in poverty rates. However, noncitizens, such as refugees and migrant workers, are subject to particular disadvantages and are especially vulnerable to exploitative working conditions and sex trafficking. The authorities do not effectively enforce laws against child labor, which is common among Syrian refugees, rural Lebanese, and segments of the urban poor.

Household workers and migrant workers who operate under the sponsorship system routinely suffer from economic exploitation. Employers are favored in legal cases involving migrant workers, discouraging the latter from reporting denial of wages and contract obligations as well as physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. In 2024, as Israeli military operations in Lebanon escalated, many migrant domestic workers were left behind when their employers evacuated.