Civil status documents from Sour district, stored on a shelf at the Ministry of the Interior in Beirut, on May 26, 2026. (Credit: Zeina Antonios/L’Orient-Le Jour)
About 20 employees bustle on the fifth floor of an Interior Ministry building in Beirut’s Sanayeh district. All of them come from southern Lebanon and, before the war, worked in local governorate offices that have since been relocated to the capital to prevent Israeli strikes from destroying the millions of handwritten civil registry records stored there.Birth certificates, marriage records, divorce papers and death certificates — countless identity documents were at risk of being destroyed or lost during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Hampered by long delays in digitization, Lebanon’s public administration has proven particularly vulnerable in times of crisis."We were displaced just like these documents," one employee said with a faint smile. Around him, large black folders — many in tatters — contain the personal...
About 20 employees bustle on the fifth floor of an Interior Ministry building in Beirut’s Sanayeh district. All of them come from southern Lebanon and, before the war, worked in local governorate offices that have since been relocated to the capital to prevent Israeli strikes from destroying the millions of handwritten civil registry records stored there.Birth certificates, marriage records, divorce papers and death certificates — countless identity documents were at risk of being destroyed or lost during the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Hampered by long delays in digitization, Lebanon’s public administration has proven particularly vulnerable in times of crisis."We were displaced just like these documents," one employee said with a faint smile. Around him, large black folders — many in tatters — contain...
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