Doctor arrested for alleged involvement in newborn trafficking ring

BEIRUT — The General Directorate of State Security in Lebanon announced Wednesday the arrest of a doctor suspected of being involved in an organized network specializing in the sale and illegal transfer of newborns.

"As part of intensified efforts aimed at tracking down human trafficking networks, and after obtaining information concerning the involvement of a doctor with an organized gang operating in the sale and illegal transfer of newborns, a patrol from the South Regional Directorate arrested a doctor," the security agency said in a statement.

According to the statement, "the investigation revealed that the doctor facilitated the network's activities by falsifying birth documents and civil registry records in order to conceal the identity of newborns and register them in violation of the law." State Security added that the doctor was already "subject to an in absentia arrest warrant issued by the investigating judge of Mount Lebanon." "The necessary legal measures have been taken against the defendant, in accordance with the instructions of the competent judicial authority," the statement concluded.

Lebanon adopted a human trafficking law in 2011, but it remains incomplete, lacking prevention measures and mechanisms for protecting victims.

More than 10,000 children born in Lebanon were adopted abroad from the early 1950s to the late 1990s, according to a 2019 report by the association Badael-Alternatives, with the vast majority adopted by families in the Netherlands, France, Denmark, the United States or Switzerland. After gathering data on 3,471 children adopted from Lebanon (only 73 of which are complete) and combing through various archives, association president Zeina Allouche denounced, photos in hand, "a real child trafficking operation during the aforementioned period," citing "falsification of documents and adoption files, such as passports, surnames, clinics, orphanages and dates or places of birth."

The U.S. State Department estimated in a report published in 2025 that while Lebanon does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking, it has nevertheless made significant efforts, which led to its upgrade to Tier 2.

However, the department noted the absence of a national action plan and the lack of comprehensive data on investigations and identified victims: the available figures even show "the lowest number of trafficking investigations in at least ten years." Among the human trafficking cases identified in Lebanon by the State Department are migrant domestic workers subject to the sponsorship system, which facilitates their exploitation and servitude.