INTRODUCTION

Launched in 2006, daleel-madani.org is a civil society portal and public domain developed, operated and managed by Lebanon Support. It is an online collaborative platform for civil society news and services. It aims to enhance the availability of and accessibility to information about civil society and state intervention, as well as to strengthen civil society cooperation in Lebanon.

CONCEPT & PURPOSE

daleel-madani.org is conceived conceptually and practically from the right to freedom of information, as addressed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, declaring that: “Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and ... the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.” Lebanon Support believes that daleel-madani.org would serve as a means to practice that right through practical online tools that allow for more transparency on the work of various actors in development as well as enhance accountability of projects and programs by the beneficiaries and the general public. Thus the design and architecture of daleel-madani.org has a dual purpose: 1) on one hand, it provides civil society in Lebanon with the means and ability to share, publish, and disseminate information and knowledge; 2) on the other hand it provides the general public with a public domain of information and a means of communication with civil society organisations.

The new release is an alpha version of the portal, which provides a series of different service, such as: publishing resources, newsletters, events, and post job vacancies in addition to existing services. It provides a wide-range library containing more than 700 categorized resources including, studies, statistics, maps and guides among others and provides extensive information on both the July 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon and the Nahr El-Bared war. The new release is predicted to encourage a higher rate of visitors, and to enhance participation levels of civil society organisations. It also provides much higher usability standards and a much more developed organisation of information and resources. Lebanon Support encourages all NGOs to update their profile information on daleel-madani.org as well as for new NGOs to register on the portal.