Ogarit Younan

She devoted her life to humane commitment.

A pioneer Arab woman for Non-Violence;
The pioneer of non-violent education in Lebanon & the Arab world;
A sociologist, researcher, writer, lecturer, and daily activist.
She is an innovator of specific methods in modern training.
In December 2022, she received The Gandhi International Award.
In June 2023, she was awarded the Honoring Doctorates of Humane Letters by LAU university in Beirut.

Founder of AUNOHR University, unique locally and worldwide; awarded by Chirac Foundation 2019.

Studying and specializing in Sociology and Education Sciences (The Lebanese University, and Sorbonne – Paris).

Founder and/or co-founder of the first human rights and nonviolent organizations in Lebanon and the Arab region, and member in the first international network of expert trainers and pioneers on peace, conflict resolution, citizenship and human rights.

She started her cultural and civil activity, soon at school. The first text she wrote was against sectarianism. After the school committee refused it, she understood from the beginning that the struggle by ‘words’ must be the path. And, in 1976, at the outset of the Lebanese war, she published an article against violence in one of the major local newspapers, which made a prominent personality visit her and invited her to be one of the founders of a peace and secular current. She was the youngest member…

In 1983, in the wake of the Lebanese war (1975-1990), she met Walid Slaiby the Arab nonviolent thinker, (the late Walid Slaiby which passed away in May 2023), and together embarked on a joint journey of life and struggle, under exceptional circumstances. Their commitment and ideas influenced thousands of youth, activists, intellectuals, media professionals, workers, marginalized communities, political actors, women, etc. and spread to various local and regional committees, institutions and programs.
Thus, they came to be known as pioneers in the renewal of civil society in Lebanon in the last four decades.

Since 1986, she launched the first bulletins on human rights in Lebanon, based on the art of simplification and vulgarization of the knowledge and published on national level with extensive impact: for the worker’s rights, for the teacher’s rights, for the youth and student’s rights, and for the community and citizens’ rights.
She has more than 20 titles of researches and publications, in education, political socialization, the history schoolbooks, the religious teaching books, the personal status, the death penalty, the compulsory military service, the women’ empowerment, the culture of non-violence… In addition to pioneer manuals and training guides, articles, lectures, short stories, and poems.

Her first book “How can be raised on sectarianism”, and its complementary book on “How can avoid being raised on sectarianism”, both translated to English, were unique in kind and had a deep impact on more than generation with particular academic interest.

In the nineties after the civil war, she initiated two exemplary civil campaigns in Lebanon, for personal status and civil marriage law, and for the abolition of the death penalty (Awarded with Walid Slaiby in the name of the association LACR that they founded in 2003 by the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic in 2005 for their struggle against the death penalty).

Younan is considered as reference in issues related to the sectarian system and laws in Lebanon. She is also known to be the first to have integrated the culture of non-violence and the conflict resolution in the official curricula in Lebanon.

Ogarit Younan sees herself in a permanent ‘philosophical thinking’, in a beautiful friendship with education and nonviolent action, to love and work, day by day…