Providing Tailored, Decision-Ready Technical Support to Women Political Leaders in Lebanon
Background
In Lebanon’s 2022 parliamentary elections, only eight women were elected to the 128-member Parliament, underscoring women’s continued underrepresentation in national decision-making. This unfolded amid prolonged political paralysis, economic collapse, institutional fragmentation, and entrenched gender inequality, all of which have made policy and legislative work more complex and politically sensitive since 2019.
In response, UN Women partnered with Triangle to deliver tailored, on-demand technical assistance to women political leaders across key policy, legislative, and communications processes. The initiative aimed to strengthen their influence by providing decision-ready research, legal drafting, policy analysis, stakeholder engagement, and strategic communications support aligned with evolving political priorities.
The Challenge
Women political leaders in Lebanon are engaging with some of the country’s most complex and politically sensitive reform files, from governance and environmental protection to economic recovery and international accountability. In a fragmented institutional context, advancing these priorities requires timely access to specialized research, legal analysis, technical expertise, stakeholder engagement, and strategic communications support.
The challenge was therefore to provide responsive and politically usable assistance that could help translate reform agendas into concrete legislative, oversight, advocacy, and communications tools.
Our Approach
Triangle adopted a flexible, demand-driven model tailored to the needs of each MP. Rather than applying a standardized form of support, the project responded to each parliamentarian’s mandate, institutional position, and policy priorities.
The support combined legal drafting, policy research, comparative analysis, expert consultations, advocacy material, briefing notes, talking points, monitoring reports, and media coaching. Across the project, Triangle worked on files related to governance reform, forest protection, MSME legislation, international justice, gender-responsive climate policy, parliamentary monitoring, and public communications.
This approach ensured that the support was connected to practical parliamentary use: briefing decision-makers, shaping legislative proposals, informing committee engagement, supporting public advocacy, and strengthening women MPs’ ability to influence reform debates.
Results and Impact
The project helped transform women MPs’ priorities into concrete policy, legislative, advocacy, and communications pathways.
On governance and public accountability, Triangle developed a governance reform package on institutionalizing monitoring, evaluation, and performance indicators across Lebanon’s public administration. The draft law and accompanying policy paper were presented to senior decision-makers and are expected to be submitted to Parliament for review.
On forest governance and deforestation, Triangle supported work through research, GIS analysis, institutional and regulatory mapping, comparative legal analysis, an explanatory memorandum, media material, and a draft law. This work is expected to feed into a broader legislative framework on Lebanon’s forests.
On MSME legislative reform, Triangle provided support through policy analysis, technical expert engagement, presentations, and draft legislation. On Lebanon’s ratification of the Rome Statute, Triangle supported advocacy through briefing notes, talking points, op-eds, position papers, and advocacy letters. On gender, climate commitments, and IMF negotiations, Triangle provided policy and briefing support. On parliamentary monitoring, Triangle produced weekly monitoring reports to support issue tracking and parliamentary awareness. On public communications, Triangle delivered tailored media training to strengthen public engagement, message delivery, and communications around political priorities.
Across these files, the impact of the project lay not only in the number of outputs produced, but in how they were positioned for use. Triangle’s support helped women MPs engage decision-makers, convene technical discussions, structure legislative proposals, communicate complex reforms, and connect policy priorities to concrete institutional entry points.
Looking Ahead
Through its partnership with UN Women, Triangle demonstrated how targeted technical assistance can strengthen women’s political leadership beyond representation alone.
As several supported files move toward parliamentary submission, institutional discussion, or public debate, the project offers a model for how women political leaders can be supported not only to participate in decision-making, but to shape it.