A man walking with crutches in a polling station in the southern suburbs of Beirut, May 4, 2025. (Credit: Mohammad Yassine/L'Orient Today.)
‘Nothing changes’ regarding the issue of accessibility for disabled people at polling stations. This is the observation made by voter Hussein Dhaïbi to L'Orient Today, at a polling station in Minyeh, Northern Lebanon.
In order to vote, he had to be carried by several people to the second floor of the public school where his polling station was located, which "affected him," he confides, regretting that "nothing changes" and that the organizers of the election, namely the Interior Ministry, "should have considered the elderly and those with reduced mobility."
Similar scenes occurred, according to our journalists deployed in northern Lebanon, at several other polling stations, such as in Amioun, where an elderly lady in a wheelchair also had to be carried up the stairs, or at the Sanawiyet Nahda school for girls, located on al-Mina Street in Tripoli, where an elderly man was supported by the crowd to return to the ground floor.
To draw attention to the issue of polling station accessibility and monitor the treatment of disabled people, the "Haqqi" (‘my right’) campaign deployed a hundred observers in the region, similar to what was done last weekend. It records the various problems observed, including mockery towards a deaf person at a polling station in the Batroun area, where a voting booth installed on a platform prevented any access for people with reduced mobility, in a school in Tripoli. It also reported situations where delegates accompanied the person with a disability behind the voting booth, violating electoral secrecy. The campaign notes some positive initiatives, such as installing ballot boxes on tripods lower than the tables usually used, allowing voters in wheelchairs to cast their ballots themselves.
In response to complaints received by the Interior Ministry, Minister Ahmad Hajjar, speaking from Tripoli, stated that he had been in contact with Sylvana Lakkis, president of the Union of Disabled People of Lebanon, at the origin of the Haqqi campaign, and that this issue "will be subject to rigorous follow-up."
Before the election, Hajjar had committed, following the ratification by President Joseph Aoun of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to take "concrete measures" to improve voting for people with reduced mobility. He later mentioned "difficulties" in achieving this, mainly due to the very short time before the election.