Out.Smart

Tarek is a sexual and bodily rights activist from Beirut, Lebanon advocating for the rights and protection of LGBT communities in the MENA region and is the executive director of Helem, the first LGBT rights organization in the Arab World, founded in 2001. He is a Ford Foundation global fellow, an Ashoka fellow, an ELI fellow at the Harvard Center for Public Leadership. Tarek has previously worked as communications manager and director of strategic planning for the MENA region at both the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace MENA offices respectively. He obtained his MALD in and international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and his MPA in leadership and advocacy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He currently lives in Beirut with his partner and three cats, all of whom are adorable.

I believe that the path towards equality and justice for queer people lies through economic liberation – by achieving our right to work, learn, receive social security, and enjoy an adequate standard of living. Queer people in the MENA region face extreme amounts of discrimination in the workplace with zero protection from the state, resulting in unemployment, homelessness, and chronic poverty. Helem is working on approaching the problem of LGBTIQ+ unemployment through human-centered design that works on improving the lives of people and not only improving the structure of institutions. We are launching a 5- year plan to approach the problem from a socio-economic rights angle by engaging in labor law reform with the state, workplace equality with the private sector, and capacity development with the community. The project sims to economically empower queer people to lead their own liberation with a strategy designed within regional socio-political and cultural dynamics.

I seek to solve the problem of unemployment of vulnerable and marginalized queer people in Lebanon and the MENA region. This problem was identified as a pivotal root cause and potential remedy for many other major issues the community faces such as food insecurity, homelessness, poverty, lack of access to healthcare, and lack of agency. The World Bank estimates that LGBTIQ+ people are over-represented in the bottom 40%, based on a dearth of data from U.S. and European sources alone which suggests that figures in the global south are exponentially worse. The COVID-19 crisis has further exacerbated the number of unemployed LGBTIQ+ individuals rising from around 150 individuals in November 2019 to more than 1200 in May 2020 according to Helem’s data alone. This has forced many into abject poverty and has rise of queer individuals seeking survival in the informal sector, particularly unregulated sex work.   Contributing factors to this can be distilled down to three major obstacles: 1) the total lack of protections and recourse to justice for queer people facing 2) discrimination in employment access as well as harassment and exploitation at work and 3) unable to access and retain employment further exacerbating existing socio-economic disenfranchisement. 

My project at Helem is a 5-year plan to critically reduce unemployment for queer people in Lebanon by working on increasing access, protection, and opportunity. It seeks to provide queer people with the resources and agency they need to lead their own civil and political liberation by improving their economic wellbeing. To be effective in creating sustainable and positive impact, Helem approaches the project from three angles designed to mutually reinforce and benefit the effects of the other simultaneously. 1) We have co-established a large coalition of organizations working on employee and labor rights, unprecedented in the region, with people with disability, migrant workers, women, and other marginalized groups to work on overhauling the labor code to include protections for all above groups; 2) We are working on improving internal policies and procedures within the private sector to attract, retain, and protect LGBTIQ+ workers, and 3) we are concentrating on teaching skills, leveraging technology, and providing seed funding for queer people seeking work and able to pursue their own enterprises. The project aims to elevate queer people to a point where they can no longer wrestle with change from the outside but instead bring about change from within. 

My project serves LGBTIQ+ people living in Lebanon surviving the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and chronic institutionalized homophobic and transphobia. These include transgender individuals, out individuals, refugees, sex workers, and other marginalized groups. Helem is a community-based organization with the only non-commercial public queer space in the MENA region and has more than 180 voting members and more than 500 visitors per week, and therefore basis all of its programming by constant engagement with the community though focus groups, surveys, and strategy meetings. We have identified 5 major challenges for the community given the evolving situation globally/locally: 1) food insecurity, 2) lack of access to healthcare, 3) eviction and homelessness, 4) domestic violence and 5) poor mental health. All of these problems are linked to economic disenfranchisement and the lack of resources to be independent from oppressive family structures which access to and retention of employment is key to solving. The project is born out of a unique understanding and long-term intellectual engagement in what constitutes queer liberation in the MENA region and the global south in general, and approaches problems by asking “how can I improve the lives of people” without necessarily asking “how do I improve laws”.

The project seems to provide opportunities for employment and economic empowerment for queer people in the MENA region, seeking a development and socio-economic rights based approach to the chronic problem of homophobia and transphobia in the region. It is based on Agenda 2030's "leave no one behind" promise and seeks to ensure those traditionally left behind are included on their own terms and on equal footing as agents of their own liberation. It seeks to engage with states, private enterprises, and marginalized communities in a symbiotic approach that integrates them within emerging solutions for global problems.

This project is inspired by Mama Jade, the 52-year old trans-woman who runs our community space and has been a mother figure to hundreds of queer young people who come to Helem seeking refuge, safety, and family. She is a trained cook, having managed 4 restaurants simultaneously and could afford her own place as well as support her entire family. When she returned to Lebanon, she was unable to secure employment due to her appearance and its incompatibility with the gender markers on her ID. She would get multiple callbacks from applications who would then immediately dismiss her when she went for the first interview. She became destitute, was forced to move back to her family home where she was subject to intense abuse; barely earning $200 per month as a cleaner while still supporting her entire family. Mama Jade is one of thousands of queer individuals whose community mobilization and acumen helped highlight this issue as a foundational public problem. She and our entire community is not looking for handouts and services; which is akin to trying to cure cancer with band-aids. We are looking for rights and opportunity and the ability to exercise agency over our own liberation. 

Leading the only public LGBTIQ+ public space in the region has allowed me to observe dynamics and interactions between communities that are happening no-where else in the world. One of the most obvious and powerful observations I continuously witness is the immense power and potential of the community and how it can be harnessed for long-lasting change. Simply put, the community already has what it takes to lead its own liberation – it is missing the right tools and terrain for that potential to turn into power. As a gay kid growing up in Beirut, I measured my own intellectual and productive worth against the amount of discrimination and violence I was subjected to. I managed to be able to resist this inertia only when I was protected, educated and provided opportunities to have agency. I want to translate what I was privileged to receive as in individual to a systemic and sustainable program that can benefit a whole community.    

Helem as an institution is unique in its design and operations because it leverages a community power building model that leverages safe/brave spaces as well as existing services to build networks and relationships for change. Helem is a place where people feel safe but are also challenged to learn and grow. It is the largest and most well-known organization of its kind in the region and has been able to leverage that in order to build alliances and the largest LGBTIQ+ network of community members, employers, and other stakeholders in Lebanon. Helem is a place that people trust and has been a central node of gathering and analyzing data about the community for more than two decades as its model combines service provision, capacity building, and policy advocacy as tools for improving people’s lives. I as a director have emphasized systemic thinking and analysis at solving the public problem of institutionalized homophobia by fusing social entrepreneurship with activism. This means that we developed outreach strategies and languages that recruited previous adversaries in civil society, the media, and government to become allies and stakeholders.  My background in public policy and political analysis greatly influenced the theory of change through which Helem now utilizes. We already have gathered the data from the community and started building queer owned SME networks, as well as engaged with labor unions and activists write large – thereby establishing the building blocks through which project is built on. 

By far the biggest challenge to this project has been the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown. Social distancing is a necessary but potentially fatal to an organization that leverages community solidarity and proximity, but COVID-19’s exposure of the latent homophobic and transphobic cracks in the entire system gave us an opening. Helem had begun to find itself increasingly forced to provide humanitarian aid to buttress the community as existing responses were hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with the exponentially rising number of queer people in need of assistance. However, entrepreneurial approaches recognize each catastrophe as an opportunity for change, especially when a historic event such as COVID-19 shocks the system to rapidly change and evolve in order to fulfill its mandate. As the entire economic and development infrastructure in Lebanon began to shift, I made sure Helem was part of every single coordination meeting in order to ensure queer people are now integrated into new response models and modus operandi. This has opened alliances previously unreachable due to discrimination including UN agencies, municipalities, ministries, and international agencies eager to integrate LGBTIQ+ communities into their work. Paradoxically, we as an institution have never been stronger and more integrated.   

One of the hardest lessons to learn in human rights advocacy is that the only change that is worth pursuing is systemic change. This of course means that must change other stakeholders in a system to change its values and carve a place for survival and inclusion. The adversary, the violent homophobia and transphobe, is an inescapable part of that system. The really unfair reality of our world is that the onus of change falls on the shoulders of the oppressed and not the oppressor, and that was why I decided to start the Bootcamp program, an interactive no-holds-barred workshop that seeks to courageously/compassionately confront the adversary in person to shift what social media awareness campaigns could not. My specialty is difficult conversations, and for the past two years I have confronted more than 400 such individuals across Lebanon including in refugee camps, labor unions, religious institutions and universities to achieve a 90% success rate in changing attitudes. Leadership is about mobilizing people to face reality, and my daily work embodies that by recognizing that even the most hateful adversary does not resist change, but resists loss, and queer people somehow represent a part of that loss. 

Our project aims to tackle a problem at its core while simultaneously ensure maximum community engagement and ownership over the long-term change we are seeking to make. LGBTQ activism in the global south has long prioritized civil and political rights as the defect approach for liberation when, in fact, the trajectory of that approach which has worked for much of the global north does not necessarily work for the global south. The development framework is proving to be a much more promising avenue for change in this regard. Our approach is disruptive precisely because it isn't disruptive in the activist sense. We tried the protesting and naming and shaming tactics and they have worked only to a degree but have failed to solve the problem systemically. The new dimension here is to not to just talk about the importance of integration and inclusion of marginalized groups but to demonstrate it in real time. The disruption here is that the project balances labor rights with employer engagement, leveraging the power of the private sector to change systems while ensuring workers have recourse to justice if and when the private sector tends to invariably prefer profit margins over people. 

Project is currently in the data gathering and foundational phase but it aims to serve 100 people in its first year and increased to 300 in the 3 years. These are individuals who will be directly benefitting from capacity building efforts. In terms of overall stakeholders served, including queer owned businesses, SMEs, and individuals benefitting from labor law reform, those numbers are not yet clear enough to predict at this stage. 

Our goals for the first year is to gather data on workplace discrimination, streamline recourse to justice within the My Work My Rights! labor reform network, and educating allies in the labor reform sector on LGBTIQ+ issues and SOGIESC basics including UN agencies, labor unions, syndicates, and civil society allies.

Within the next five years, Helem plans on producing data making the Lebanese case for economic inclusion by highlighting  the economic cost of discrimination on Lebanese businesses in particular and the economy in general.

We also plan on investing in multiple advocacy campaigns along with allies to overhaul the labor sector to include specific protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

We also plan on creating the first queer-owned business network and a matching program with existing queer prospective employees.

Helem also plans on creating the pathway to equality toolkit for SMEs and other businesses in Lebanon wishing to reform their internal policies and infrastructure to be more inclusive of queer people. Helem plans to recruit at least 150 such institutions in key industries to sign on.

Helem plans on starting a tech bootcamp in collaboration with global tech leaders for young queer individuals to learn how to code and leverage digital industries in order to be both safe and competitive on the job market in the short and medium term. 

The biggest barrier for our project in the next few years is the unpredictability of COVID-19 and the Lebanese economic recession and how it is going to impact the private sector landscape in Lebanon. Many business will either close down or change their model which would force a rethinking of how we plan on approaching both them as well as government and non-governmental institutions working on issues of labor and employment. This also applies to force majeure. 

The other barrier is the institutionalized discrimination we will undoubtedly be facing as we move forward with this project. This includes private sector organizations as well as stakeholders in the labor law reform project. 

Helem is in the data gathering and design phase of the project and is including contingency plans that aim to constantly adjust the details of the engagements in the project. The project's focus on legislation, workplace equality, and community empowerment guarantees that even if one of the corresponding targets of the three foci is temporarily compromised or unstable due to political, economic, and social instability respectively, progress on the project as a whole can continue and pivot towards one of the three that remains functional and largely resistant to shocks in the system. 

As for institutionalized discrimination, Helem's Bootcamp program has a 90% success rate and has proven to be one of the most effective tools we have as an organization in order to influence the terrain of partner and target institutions in order to sow more fertile grounds for collaboration. 

Helem currently partners with the Lebanese Center for Worker and Employee Rights to gather data on LGBTIQ+ discrimination in the workplace and providing free legal advice and representation for individuals wishing to challenge and current and past employers.

Helem also partners with the Legal Agenda, the leading organization in Lebanon working on legislative reform and the experts on labor law reform in particular. 

We plan on applying for multiple year grants that support this project in each of its three key phases individually. We do not plan on selling products or raising investment capital at this point given the nature of our work and the population which we serve. We also rely on unrestricted funding and private sector donations for this project especially as we aim to demonstrate how LGBTIQ+ inclusivity helps businesses improve their bottom line especially when they meet existing international benchmarks on this issue. 

We have raised funds from two international donors, Freidrcih Ebert Stiftung as well as Mondiaal FNV in order to jumpstart the data gathering phase of this project. These are grants for us to implement with partners and do not include income or revenue generating activities. 

The entire project's estimating is 350-400 thousand USD over a three year period but that number is tentative given the outcome of the studies we are currently conducting with the community. It will also depend on the landscape of the private sector in Lebanon after it levels out given the current destabilization.

We would like to formally partner with organizations like UNDP, ILO, and the World Bank and have begun conversations with each of these agencies in order to secure the support and expertise in designing and implementing the project after the initial data gathering phase is complete.

We would also like to partner with tech companies based in Lebanon and the U.S. to start the tech bootcamp for queer people in the MENA region. Organizations like Transtech, Lesbians Who Tech, and the Human Rights Methodology Lab as well as research institutes like the Williams Institute.