A woman casts her ballot during the parliamentary elections of May 15, 2022. (Credit: Marc Fayad/L'Orient Today)
About ten Lebanese MPs submitted on Friday a request to amend the Constitution to lower the voting age to 18, denouncing a “blatant contradiction” between the age of legal majority in Lebanon, reached at 18, and the voting age, set at 21.
The request is signed by MPs mostly from the protest movement and joined in particular by Faisal Sayegh (Joumblatt group), Farid Boustani (Free Patriotic Movement), Ahmad al-Kheir (former Hariri ally), Ihab Matar (Jamaa Islamiya) and Jamil Sayed.
These parliamentarians notably recall that legal majority in Lebanon is reached at 18, with legal, civil and criminal responsibilities to assume from that age.
It is also at this age that one can join the army, become a member of a party or a union, and apply for civil service. However, 18-year-old citizens are “deprived of their right to participate in political life,” they said, calling this a “blatant contradiction.”
The proposed amendment to Article 21 of the Constitution simply changes the minimum voting age, without any other modification to the sentence, which currently states: “Every Lebanese citizen who has reached the age of 21 and meets the conditions stated by the electoral law is an elector.”
Lowering the voting age is discussed before each election, but no constitutional amendment has ever been approved.
Last March, MP Ali Hassan Khalil (Amal Movement), who has presented several election law proposals since a parliamentary election is scheduled for May 2026, also advocated for the right to vote beginning at age 18.
