Practical guidance for women human rights defenders, women in public and civic life, LGBTQI+ defenders, allies, and community moderators facing digital violence during periods of heightened public and political visibility.
In Lebanon, taking part in public life can cost a woman far more than political disagreement. Speaking out can bring comments about her looks instead of her arguments, her private life dragged into the conversation, fake accounts posting in her name, and in the worst cases her home address or intimate images circulated to people who were never meant to see them. This is not the ordinary friction of public life. It is a pattern, and its purpose is to raise the cost of visibility until women, women human rights defenders, and LGBTQI+ people withdraw from public life on their own.
HuMENA for Human Rights and Civic Engagement publishes the Public Sphere Safety Kit: Practical Tools for Safer Civic Life as part of its work under the Digital Democracy Initiative, in partnership with Innovation for Change – MENA Hub and CIVICUS. The Kit is a practical, action-oriented resource for staying engaged in Lebanon’s civic and public life through politically tense periods, including elections, public campaigns, protests, advocacy moments, and other times of heightened visibility. Its starting position is simple: safety and participation are not opposites. Easing exposure during an attack is a way to keep going, not a reason to step away.
Why this Kit matters
Online violence is not separate from civic space. It shapes who gets to speak, organize, campaign, report, advocate, and remain visible in public life. When it goes unchecked, the public sphere narrows, and the voices pushed out are usually the ones already underrepresented in it.
In Lebanon, women in public life, Women Human Rights Defenders, LGBTQI+ defenders, journalists, candidates, and civic actors face heightened exposure to digital violence during moments of political tension and public visibility. These attacks commonly take the form of gendered harassment, doxxing, outing, impersonation, coordinated harassment, threats, and the non-consensual sharing or fabrication of intimate content.
The Kit treats digital violence as a civic space issue rather than a private misfortune. It gives people practical ways to identify risks early, document evidence before it disappears, assess how serious a situation is, reduce exposure, and choose safer response pathways.
What the Kit covers
The Kit provides accessible guidance on identifying and responding to the main forms of digital violence, including Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV), doxxing, outing, impersonation, coordinated harassment, non-consensual intimate images, AI-generated and deepfake sexual content, the targeting of women journalists, and diaspora or cross-border attacks.
Alongside these, it includes tools for rapid risk identification and severity triage, a first-response flow for the first 24 to 72 hours after an incident, safer participation options, AI-related digital safety risks, platform reporting guidance, support pathways and referrals, guidance for allies and colleagues, guidance for page admins and moderators, and quick checklists for use under pressure.
Who this Kit is for
This resource is intended primarily for Women Human Rights Defenders, women in public and civic life including candidates and civic actors, LGBTQI+ defenders and activists, and the allies and support networks around them.
It is also written for the people who shape how an attack spreads or is contained: civic actors and community organizers, moderators and administrators of community pages, digital community managers, and civic groups and individuals engaged in Lebanon’s public and electoral processes who may face the same forms of digital attack.
How to use it
The Kit is modular. No one needs to read it cover to cover; the point is to reach the right part at the right moment.
- Before a high-risk period, such as an election or a campaign, work through the preparedness checklist. Turn on two-factor authentication, separate your public and private accounts, review what personal information is publicly visible, and agree with one or two trusted people on how they will help if something happens.
- When an attack begins, use the triage tool first to read how serious it is, then slow down before responding. Document everything before reporting anything, because content often disappears the moment a platform review starts.
- As an incident unfolds, follow the first 24-to-72-hour response flow and rely on the response and documentation checklists instead of improvising under pressure.
- If you are an ally, colleague, or team, read the guidance written for you before acting, and start by asking the targeted person what they actually need.
- If you run a page or a group, apply the non-amplification practices so your space does not become part of the attack.
In practice, the Kit helps users identify the type and severity of an attack, document evidence before it is lost, build a clear timeline, decide whether and how to report content, reduce exposure while staying present in public life, support others without increasing their risk, and moderate community spaces more safely.
Built for the Lebanese context
What makes this Kit specific to Lebanon is its honesty about the institutions meant to help. Reporting an attack to the state is not a neutral act here. The Internal Security Forces, the judiciary, and related bodies operate inside a sectarian political environment where a complaint can be redirected or turned against the person who filed it.
For LGBTQI+ users the risk is sharper, since Article 534 of the Penal Code has been used to detain people on the basis of evidence they brought forward themselves. Lebanon’s defamation provisions have been used to prosecute targets who answered their attackers in public. The Kit treats these as real constraints. It names the organizations to consult before approaching any state body, and it is clear that a pathway which is safe for one person can be dangerous for another.
Safety is not the target’s burden alone
The Kit refuses to place the whole weight of safety on the person under attack. A dedicated section sets out what platforms, political parties, employers, and donors owe the people they put at risk: faster removal pathways, moderation applied consistently across political affiliations, legal and psychosocial support covered by employers rather than the target, and party codes of conduct with real sanctions for members who take part in or benefit from these attacks. Naming these responsibilities gives targets and their allies a clear set of demands to make of the institutions around them.
Practical guidance, not a substitute for specialized support
The Public Sphere Safety Kit is a rapid reference and preparedness tool. It can help users take immediate steps, preserve evidence, reduce exposure, and identify where to turn for help.
It does not replace specialized legal, psychosocial, or digital security support, and it does not promise that reporting will remove content or that an attack will stop. Some situations require professional intervention, particularly where there are credible threats, doxxing, non-consensual intimate images, outing, legal exposure, or signs of offline harm. What the Kit offers is a way to make faster, better-informed decisions and to stay in public life on terms the person under attack still controls.
Developed with the people it is meant to protect
The Kit was developed through a practice-based and participatory process grounded in the lived experiences of women human rights defenders, women civic actors, LGBTQI+ defenders, and allied practitioners in Lebanon. It reflects the patterns of harm they named, the gaps in protection they identified, and the practical needs they prioritized through HuMENA’s validation work in 2026. Lebanon’s legal and digital environment keeps shifting, and HuMENA reviews and revises the Kit as conditions change.
We encourage organizations and networks working in Lebanon to share the Kit with the people who need it. For inquiries or partnerships related to this resource, contact [email protected].
