Beyond the Rubble: Lebanese Women Safeguarding Memory and Heritage
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When Rima Sharara had to leave Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon during the 2026 war, she had little space in her car to carry belongings. But among the few things she made sure to take were the computer and hard drives of the Bint Jbeil Public Library. They contained years of photographs, records, and documentation of the library’s cultural and community activities, as well as an oral history archive preserving stories from across the region.
“The archive was a priority,” says Rima, who has managed the library since 2004. “Clothes can be replaced, but this is the history of the library. If I had left it behind, fifty years from now someone could have come and said: there was never a library here.”
Today, the library has been completely destroyed by the war. Thousands of books, equipment, and a physical space that had served generations of residents have been lost. But part of its history survived because Rima carried it with her.
Among the material she saved are 24 oral history recordings from 24 towns and villages in Bint Jbeil district. Collected from older women and men, with women playing an important role in documenting and preserving them, the recordings capture local stories, songs, and experiences passed down through generations, helping preserve the collective heritage of the area.
“Stone can be destroyed, but they cannot erase our memory,” says Rima. “Saving these materials is an act of cultural resistance and a way of protecting our history.”
Rima Sharara, Member of Librarian Women's Committee, Bint Jbeil Library. Photo: Ahmad Abu Salem/UN Women Lebanon, 2026.
The Bint Jbeil Public Library was established in 2001, as communities in southern Lebanon were rebuilding their lives following the end of the Israeli occupation in 2000.
Wafaa Sharara was 21 when she joined the team that established it. “The library was like a child to me,” she says. “We established it and raised it, and every time I saw it growing and succeeding, I saw part of myself in it.”
Over the years, the library grew to house around 15,000 catalogued books, alongside thousands more awaiting classification, including old and rare books in Arabic, French, and English, encyclopaedias, documents, periodicals, and cultural collections.
It also grew beyond a place to borrow books into a community space serving Bint Jbeil and surrounding towns and villages. Its development was supported by neighbouring municipalities, members of the Bint Jbeil diaspora, and a number of local and international partners, including the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which provided in-kind support, helped organize activities, and regularly participated in library events.
“A public library is one of the few places in a community that truly belongs to everyone. It provides free access to knowledge and information, but also something equally valuable: a shared space where generations and people of different backgrounds can come together,” says Ghassan Salamé, Minister of Culture. “That is why the destruction of a library is never simply the destruction of a building: it is the loss of a place of learning, encounter and collective memory. In communities marked by conflict and displacement, preserving these spaces and what they represent is essential to maintaining the bonds that allow a community to endure and rebuild.”
Students from a diversity of backgrounds came to study and conduct research, children participated in storytelling and cultural activities, and women joined dialogue sessions, skills training, and psychosocial support activities. Most importantly, the library created a space for people to connect. “It was a meeting place for everyone,” says Wafaa. “Christians and Muslims, students, teachers, women, readers, and artists, all came together in one place.”
For women, these connections also extended across villages. “Women from different villages met through the activities and got to know one another,” says Rima. “It was a place that brought women together.”
Over time, these encounters created friendships and networks that extended beyond the library, strengthening mutual support, trust, and social cohesion across communities facing repeated conflict and displacement.
Wafaa Sharara, Member of Librarian Women's Committee, Bint Jbeil Library. Photo: Ahmad Abu Salem/UN Women Lebanon, 2026.
From participation to women’s leadership
Building on the role that public libraries play in communities, UN Women, through the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), partnered with ASSABIL to establish and support Women’s Committees linked to public libraries. Drawing on ASSABIL’s strong community presence and experience in creating inclusive civic spaces, the initiative has provided women with a sustained platform to identify priorities in their communities, organize locally led activities, and respond to emerging needs. In doing so, it has helped strengthen women’s voice and leadership in community response, social cohesion, and peacebuilding, while reinforcing public libraries as spaces for participation, connection, and collective action.
In Bint Jbeil, the Women’s Committee brings together six women with different skills, experiences, and community networks. This diversity helps them understand the realities facing women in Bint Jbeil and surrounding villages, identify needs, and shape locally grounded responses.
“Investing in women and in the community spaces they know and trust means investing in the relationships and local knowledge that communities rely on, particularly in times of crisis,” says Gielan Elmessiri, UN Women Representative in Lebanon. “When women have the space and resources to lead, they can respond to local needs, strengthen connections, and help communities recover and rebuild together.”
For Wafaa, joining the Committee meant returning to the institution she had helped create. “I felt that I was returning to the place where I started, having gained experience that I can now invest in serving the library and the local community."
As displacement, economic hardship, and uncertainty placed growing pressure on families, this local knowledge became even more important.
“When you help women manage the pressures they are living through, you help reduce the tension that can affect the family, the neighbour, and the people around them,” Wafaa explains. “No one understands a woman like another woman.”
Their work reflects a central principle of the Women, Peace and Security agenda: women affected by conflict are not only recipients of assistance, but leaders with the knowledge, networks, and experience to identify needs, ease tensions, strengthen relationships, and contribute to locally led recovery.
Community members at the Bint Jbeil Public Library on 28 February 2026, one day before the outbreak of the war. This was the last photo taken inside the library before it was destroyed. Photo: Rima Sharara/Bint Jbeil Library, 2026.
A trusted space in times of crisis
Following the 2024 war, the library showed how quickly a trusted community institution could support recovery. After people began returning to Bint Jbeil, its equipment was repaired, electricity and internet access were restored, and the library reopened in less than a week. Teachers and students came to connect to online classes when these services remained unavailable in many homes.
When Rima announced the reopening, the response stayed with her.
“More than one hundred people commented,” she recalls. “They told us, ‘You came back before everyone else. You gave us hope.’”
Reopening the library had become a sign that community life could begin again.
The 2026 conflict has now taken away that physical space. Its destruction represents more than the loss of books and a building. It has also taken away a place where women participated in community life, relationships were built across villages, and people came together during difficult times.
“Women in Bint Jbeil and the South have lost an important part of themselves,” says Rima. “The library contributed to their identity, through reading, empowerment, developing skills, or simply by being a place they could come to.”
Satellite imagery showing the destruction of the Bint Jbeil Public Library during the 2026 war. The library had served Bint Jbeil and surrounding villages as a shared space for learning, community activities, and connection. Photo: Image shared with the Bint Jbeil Public Library by members of the Bint Jbeil diaspora, 2026.
Yet not everything was lost.
The Women’s Committee remains. The relationships built through years of community work remain. And the archive Rima carried out of Bint Jbeil remains. .
Preserving this collective memory is part of recovery. Rebuilding after conflict is not only about restoring walls, shelves, and books, but also about preserving a community’s history, relationships, and identity. Women like Rima, who have documented, protected, and carried this memory through repeated crises, play an important role in keeping it alive for future generations.
“Meeting Rima and hearing her story made clear the leading role women play in preserving the memories, relationships, and sense of belonging that hold communities together,” says Imran Riza, United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon. “In the face of destruction, they are protecting identity, strengthening social cohesion and helping shape recovery and peace in their own communities.”
After the 2006 war, Rima remembers saying: “We will return like a flame that does not go out.”
Years later, and after the library’s destruction, she still holds on to that belief.
“People can always rebuild what has been destroyed,” she says.
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