• Budget: €1,200,000
• Location: Lebanon
• Date of project: May 2015 – May 2018
• Implementing Partner: Restart Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture

Like many penitentiary systems around the world, prisons in Lebanon are at a stage of crisis. Lacking decent infrastructure and specialised personnel, they suffer from a poor quality of forensic and medical services delivery, inadequate health providers’ capacities, a lack of management skills among prisons’ administration as well as insufficient rehabilitative services.

In order to avoid the detrimental consequences of an overstretched and poorly managed penitentiary system, the European Union has been supporting Lebanon’s efforts to improve prisoners’ living conditions, both at the security and health levels.

The European Union thus partnered with Restart Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, an organization specialised in human rights protection, rehabilitation and prevention from torture. This partnership aims to help improve detention conditions and access to basic services for prisoners across Lebanon, through infrastructure renovation, capacity building and improved programming.

The collaboration also seeks to create a solid, comprehensive partnership and cooperation framework between the Ministry of Justice and all key stakeholders and state actors, starting with the establishment of a national protocol on prisons’ management. This protocol, which is to be fully integrated within the curricula of Internal Security Forces (ISF), will serve as the common basis shared by all law enforcement personnel throughout the country.