Urban Space and the Right to Peaceful Assembly: Theoretical Frameworks and Illustration of the 2005 and 2019 Protests in Downtown Beirut

Abstract

The right to peaceful assembly, as one of the civil-political human rights, is often limited by states through various means. While legal studies have so far focused on the areas of permit issuance or security measures related to the right to assembly, there appears to be a research gap concerning policies and actions that utilize urban spaces in this context. On the other hand, protests (or, in other words, significant protests) usually take place in urban environments, and protesters use tactics in urban spaces to express their objections. This research aims to identify the role of space in the right to peaceful assembly from both legal and political perspectives. It will examine the tactics that protesters use to exercise their rights within urban contexts and how authorities or other anti-protest groups utilize urban spaces to counter protests. The spatial dimensions of the right to peaceful assembly, were first identified with a library research method. Then, the main state’s policies and protestors actions to restrict or exercise this right through urban space were studied. In the final two sections and after discussing various aspects of geography, demography, economy and politics in Lebanon and also urban matters in Beirut, especially the reconstruction of the city after the civil war, the protests of 2005 and 2019 were analyzed in terms of the use of urban tools by protesters for protesting and by the government for countering them. Our study revealed that protests in urban spaces, from one perspective, are actually a form of contention with the state over an unlimited resource known as space, and while citizens strive to make their protests heard effectively by those in power through their presence in the urban sphere, state has string motivations and uses various tools to dominate this space. Based on the various components of the city; the various tactics of protesting citizens and the government discussed in Chapter Three with numerous examples from different countries. On the other hand, Lebanon, and specifically Beirut, with its underlying and structural elements such as sectarianism, the high importance of real estate, and a history of colonial urban planning and design where security and military concerns were the main priority for planners, serves as a comprehensive laboratory to observe these tactics. These approaches are particularly evident in the planning for the reconstruction of downtown Beirut, notably the Solidere project. However, during the 2005 protests, people responded by occupying space. The same tactic, along with tactics such as locking down transportation infrastructure in a city like Beirut, where personal car transport is of high importance, was also seen in the 2019 protests. In contrast, the government countered these protests by exploiting sectarian divides in urban design, using classical methods like blocking routes, and ultimately taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to regain control of public spaces.