Walid Slaybi

A leading non-violent intellectual and activist in Lebanon and the Arab world.
Slaybi is a writer, researcher and innovator of new concepts within the political economy, the strategy and the culture of non-violence.
Studying and specializing in political economy, sociology, physics, and civil engineer (Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) – Beirut, American University of Beirut (AUB), Ecole Nationale Supérieure Des Télécommunications (ENST) – Paris, Lebanese University, and Sorbonne - Paris).
Expert as strategist in civil campaigns, nonviolent direct actions and advocacy for human rights, he was also for many years an expert consultant for unions and worker’s committees.
Founder and/or partner in the first organizations of civil rights and nonviolent movements in Lebanon and the Arab world. 

He started his activity early, known for courage and freedom of thought. Since the college, he was deeply influenced by Tolstoy and by the social humane philosophy.
In 1982, he wrote his first pamphlet against the war, the absurdity of violence and the sectarian-political divisions, and dedicated it to the “fighters”, all “fighters” of all militias and armed groups. This was the introduction of his first book titled “The Question is the Portion”.   

He met Ogarit Younan in 1982, in the wake of the Lebanese war, and embarked on a joint journey of life and struggle, as partners seeking to build their dream day by day under exceptional circumstances. They shared the same vision to serve the values of non-violence, justice, freedom, non-sectarianism, and love.
They came to be known as pioneers in the renewal of civil society in Lebanon for the past three decades (since the mid-eighties).

In 1989, he participated in the international conference on non-violence and civil rights in Paris (titled “200 years after the French revolution”), where he was the representative of a unique Arab nonviolent movement and presented an innovated strategy of nonviolent actions in conflict situations and wartime.

He launched many simplified researches on socio-economic rights, based on innovated scientific econometric rules, and spread them by himself, which had a deep impact and concrete results on several social groups and thousands of workers.
He was known as the initiator and general coordinator of national pioneer campaigns, during wartime for the coming peace early in the nineteens: campaigns for the unification of the two syndicates of teachers after 20 years of division, the ratification of a non-sectarian law for civil personal status, the abolition of the death penalty, the beach to the citizens…

He wrote 20 books and researches, on the economic history, the economic structure and the debt, on the death penalty, on workers’ rights, on violence and human nature, on non-violence and civil resistance… In addition to lectures, articles, training programs, academic courses, plays and quotes.
He took the initiative and launched the first series of “nonviolent translations” into Arabic: supervising, editing, and translating some of the books, so that the first sixteen major nonviolent books were translated and published in the nineteens.  

Walid Slaybi chose the role of the ‘intellectual – activist’, seeking permanently to crystallize new ideas and actions within a beautiful friendship with passion, joy and work, day by day…