There are so many problems that plague Lebanon, it takes an actually shock to shake a change of ways.

And so, we decided to shock the country but with the actual and legal truth. Since there is no law against underage marriage, we opened Young 3arous, a legal underage matrimonial agency that lives on a website and in malls on a booth.

We tackled the campaign in such a shocking manner that our message organically spread. Everyone was talking about young 3arous with outrage: The people, The police, the media. All the outrage engaged over 5 million people.

Operating since 1976, RDFL is one of the first NGOs to fight for women’s rights and equality in Lebanon. In 2017 RDFL became the number one enemy of early marriage in the country, a practice that is still legal in Lebanon, resulting in more than 3,000 child brides in 2018 alone. Up until this day no effort was able to legally protect these young victims and, as an NGO fighting for gender equality, RDFL wanted to petition the government to implement a law setting the legal age of marriage at 18. RDFL wanted to bring the conversation about early marriage to the forefront of political, religious and social matters.

After campaigning against child marriage for two years, RDFL had to use a new rhetoric and so, decided to embrace the tradition too. They did that by also adopting the old Lebanese tradition of matchmaking and taking it one step further by introducing the first ever e-matrimonial child bride agency, where expats and others could find their underage bride.

Our PR strategy relied on the tackling a very societal and sensitive issue through a teaser/revealer campaign. The element of shock that such a platform/agency existed, ignited the conversation within the majority asking to shut it down, and others inquiring for more. We convinced people to believe in a fake agency, Young Bride, by highlighting the absurdness of the law allowing underage girl to be married. As governmental force took action, we had already partnered up with the host of a famous prime time tv show that tackles societal issues, and handed recordings and footage gathered through on-ground efforts to be exposed. The show had religious personnel and people that have lived such experiences to lead a debate that also went to become an online debate. The exposure continued until we got 3000 people to protest and made headlines on 80 news channels, and numerous blogs and social media channels.

Profiles of underage girls filled the pages of young3arous.com, the campaign website, and were spread on dedicated social media pages. For those unfamiliar with e-commerce, an in-mall booth was set up to offer the child brides.

Most of the girls on offer were actual young brides, either dead or who had suffered traumatic injuries both physical and psychological because they were too young to bear children.

And just like that, we had around 5,000 potential future grooms of young brides. They were naturally lured on the website and into a dedicated database.

Then, the best talk show in town invited RDFL to go public with the initiative on prime-time TV.

Finally, we called people to march with us and call out to change the law protecting underage girls from early marriage.

In less than a month, the initiative attracted over 5,000 people to the website, mostly expatriates, and engaged over 6 million people on-ground, on tv and on digital platforms.

On the local scene, the country was outraged. The police shut down our social media. The people operating the booth were taken into questioning. Media was outraged, with the best talk show in town taking the lead in exposing the tradition for what it really is. By then, RDFL had built its database, with the signature of 2,942 future grooms of young brides, pledging to stop this ugly tradition.

Finally, thousands of activists, alongside lawmakers and MPS took to the streets demanding for the early marriage law to pass. As a result, the law found its way back to parliament, about to be put on schedule of an upcoming hearing. The initiative was covered by 80 PR and Media resrouces.

Lebanese people can’t catch a break when it comes to politics and religion. And due to the constant turmoil in the country, people have become numb regarding matters such as child marriage that do not affect them directly. Additionally, Lebanese laws are set and abide by religious norms. The most prominent two religions are Christianity and Islam, and in both religions underage marriage is not condemned. As a result, there is no law in Lebanon protecting young girls from early marriage.

When creating the shocking campaign, we were forced to shut down both online and offline activities due to people and the government’s reaction, yet no action has been taken on a legislative standpoint.