Lebanon’s digital landscape has grown more volatile with every year of crisis. Financial collapse, a rise of disinformation, the spread of hate speech, and the ongoing pressures of instability have all left their mark on how people in Lebanon experience the internet. Several cases of disinformation have been documented by SMEX’s digital safety Helpdesk, highlighting the escalating online threats and increase in hate speech.
SMEX has spent years monitoring these threats and continues to do so, especially during the recent war. Alongside that work, we began a new initiative: engaging with Lebanon’s public sector, in a multi-stakeholder approach involving all concerned parties, to help build a more sustainable and equitable digital future together. Therefore, we have continued the work we believe can lead to real change: sitting down in open dialogue directly with people who write Lebanon’s digital policy.
SMEX has spent years monitoring these threats and continues to do so, especially during the recent war. Alongside that work, we began a new initiative: engaging with Lebanon’s public sector, in a multistakeholder approach involving all concerned parties, to help build a more sustainable and equitable digital future together. Therefore, we have continued the work we believe can lead to real change: sitting down in open dialogue directly with people who write Lebanon’s digital policy.
Why we’re in the room and what we’ve done 
Digital policy in Lebanon tends to lag behind technical reality. That gap can leave real risks under-addressed; from data privacy violations to the state of public digital infrastructure. As digital rights experts, we at SMEX wanted to offer our expertise to ensure these rights are well protected.
Our engagement is not about politics. It is about policy. By sharing what we know directly to government ministries and different institutions, we are positioning ourselves as a resource to help them navigate complex digital governance challenges while ensuring that human rights, privacy and user safety remain at the center of the conversation.
Over the past few months, we’ve met repeatedly with several key ministries in Lebanon: 

Each meeting followed the same approach. We listen and map each ministry’s challenge against where our expertise in digital rights, policy analysis, and technical security can help. 
From there, we’ve pushed on a problem we kept running into: a lack of coordination, conflict of interest, and political agendas, priorities which fragments Lebanon’s digital transformation. We have stepped in directly on draft legislation, offering legal analysis on data protection, cybersecurity and media regulation, alongside technical analysis to help government platforms ensure they are secure and privacy compliant.
And because nearly every ministry has raised the same need for capacity building, we’re now preparing training on digital safety, data protection and literacy, in the hope of turning these conversations into longer-term cooperation.

We aren’t looking for quick wins. We are aiming for sustainable structural change that outlasts any one meeting or ministry cycle. 
That means continuing to monitor and weigh in on draft laws, including data protection  and cybersecurity bills, so they meet international and human rights standards. It also means working with partners to move Lebanon away from ineffective bans and toward comprehensive rights-based digital safety education, especially for youth. We are also moving to help ministries close the security gaps in their own websites and platforms that put citizens at risk.
This means keeping the channels open. Several ministries are now part of ongoing dialogue with SMEX. We are also inviting ministry teams to our annual Bread & Net gathering to foster a wider community of technologists, policymakers and activists.
SMEX believes, as it always has, that the future of tech is ours to decide. The digital future belongs to communities, to people.  By moving beyond observation to direct engagement, we’re working to make sure Lebanon’s digital future is shaped by protection, transparency and the fundamental rights of all its people.
We look forward to sharing more updates as these collaborations develop.
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