Editorial: Combating Gender-Based Violence in the Arab World

In the Arab world today the movement to eradicate gender-based violence is focusing on eliminating gender inequality and on addressing social, legal, and familial relationships that condone violence. Non-governmental organizations and other partners in civil society are drafting and proposing amendments to present laws that will help eliminate gender inequality and provide the opportunity to rethink and reconstruct social relationships in the region. However, when I set out to explore this work in Lebanon it became clear that the calls for state implementation of laws targeted at eliminating violence against women on the ground are caught up in a process of translation that must address a number of complex and sometimes conflicting concerns. This is clearly reflected in the section where the controversy over the draft law aimed at protecting women from family violence is discussed. From the very beginning, stakeholders involved in drafting the law knew that they were working within a context that needed to address religious, social, familial, and political boundaries. The very choice of the word ‘family violence’ emanated from the conviction that the term ‘domestic violence’ does not encompass the violence within the Lebanese social and familial context