In Lebanon, there was NO LAW to protect women from gender-based violence within the family.

Kafa, a leading women’s rights NGO, drafted a law against Domestic Violence, but it was negleted by the parliament for years.

Finally, on April 1st, 2014, the law drafted by Kafa was going to be proposed for voting in Parliament.

Kafa came to us 3 days before Pariliament’s meeting to help them put pressure on Members of Parliament to vote the LAW.

Since Women represent 52% of the voting force, and those members of Parliament were running again for legislative elections, we decided to threaten the MPs with the one weapon that could make a difference: OUR VOTES.

We invited people to color their thumbs in red, color of women’s injuries (instead of the “blue” ink used for voting in LEBANON) and threaten overtly: Vote for us, We’ll vote for you.

Like wildfire, people from all walks of life joined our movement resulting in an unprecedented wave of engagement that led to the passing of the law.

In Lebanon, most TV channels and newspapers belong to a male political figure and are driven by a political movement, and so Members of Parliament kind of control the Media.

So for us, it was a big challenge to convince TV anchors and Print Journalists to have their thumbs colored in RED. And they did.

• More than 22 million Twitter impressions in the first 2 weeks from 51 countries

• More than 20,000 physical and digital red thumbs gathered

• A 700% increase in online conversations about domestic violence

• A 350% increase in comments on Kafa’s Facebook page

• A 23% increase in followers on Kafa’s Twitter page

• 1.7 million USD in earned media

• 2 million people exposed to the campaign from the TV news coverage only in a country of 4 million

On April 1st 2014, while we were standing outside parliament, the law against domestic violence was passed.

For the first time in Lebanon, a protection order in favor of a woman, of many more to come, was issued by a civil court.

And few weeks later, a violent husband was sentenced to jail.

In Lebanon there was no Law to Protect Women from Family violence, in a society that is still extremely patriarchal and where the judicial system is affected by corruption.

All judicial matters related to families or personal status are handled by religious courts, which laws still favor the man.

As such, domestic violence remains a big taboo, covered by the law of silence.

Also, the Members of Parliament who are supposed to pass gender equality laws are 92 % males in a society that still believes that politics are matters of men.

Adding to that, it is culturally known that men in the family decide of the political voting of the members of the family, so for a woman to use her Voting Force as a threat was a first in Lebanon.

For years, Kafa, a leading NGO, has been working relentlessly on lobbying to pass a law to protect women specifically from domestic violence. The law remained for a long time dormant in the parliament’s drawers.

On April 1, 2014, the parliament was meeting to pass several laws. So, three days before the parliament meeting, Kafa came to us to help put pressure on MPs to vote the law.

We only had 3 days to make it happen and wanted to use our campaign to inspire a popular movement.

Women are the majority oif the voting popukation in LEBANON, and the current MPs ware running again for Legislative Elections.

So we decided to bargain our vote for the vote of each MP in favor of the domestic violence law.

We asked Kafa activists and few TV anchors to colour their thumbs in red, colour of women’s injuries and post them online or show their Red Thumbs on TV.

People from all walks of life joined our movement; celebrities endorsed our cause; media anchors actively supported our movement; brands and institutions joined in, spoofing our red thumbs on their brands.

Students were posting their red-thumbs from schools and universities, women running with red thumbs at the Beirut Women Marathon, and actors showing their red thumbs on stage.

In less than 72 hours our red thumbs created an unprecedented wave of engagement.