Suzanne Jabbour, laureate of the North-South Prize, is the Director of RESTART, a center for the rehabilitation of victims of violence and torture. She participated on the workshop about the role of civil society in the protection of human rights, where she provided an effective analysis of the role of civil society particularly in Lebanon.

Civil society represents a fundamental counterbalance to Nation’s power, “offering protection from potential abuses and arbitress of state power”. At the same time, it is however important to cooperate with governments, states, parliaments by keeping a critical distance.

The important task of RESTART and other NGO's in Lebanon is to protecting human rights of migrants, since they are on constant danger of abuses, exploitation or arbitrary detention. The role of civil society has been essential in many occasions including the promotion of human rights to the public opinion, the assistance to the government in setting and observing appropriate standards for protecting human rights of migrants and the lobbying for the ratification of relevant Human Rights Treaties.

Civil society, and in this context RESTART plays a central role and has a crucial function in informing people and migrants about their rights and monitoring violations. This is particularly important in difficult environments as prisons, where are held many not registered refugees, and in relation to “disadvantaged groups among the migrant population e.g. minorities, children, psychiatric patients or those with disabilities and the elderly”.

Once again, Dr. Jabbour underlined the importance of civil society actors in sharing information and promoting media campaigns in order to “shed the light on human rights’ violations against migrants”. Despite of all the work the civil society is undertaking, they face many challenges “ranging from financial limitations, to intimidation and persecution, to reprisal and arrests, to enforced dissolution and transparency skepticism”. These constraints do not stop many diverse actors to give-up on their cause, since “civil society remains the light at the end of the tunnel for thousands of victims”.