Lama Fakih is so much more than a bright, successful, energetic Lebanese American, who grew up in Michigan.  She is a researcher in Lebanon and Syria for Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.

Fakih said she was inspired to work on human rights issues very early in her career.

HRW has been documenting human rights violations by states and factions around the world for 35 years and, in recent years, has worked to document abuses by both sides of the conflict in Syria’s ongoing civil war. Fakih plays a leading role in gathering and writing the organization’s reports on Syria.

Born in Beirut, Fakih grew up in Saginaw, Michigan and attended high school in West Bloomfield. She has a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a law degree from New York University. Prior to joining HRW, the Beirut-based researcher worked with several human rights organizations on a variety of issues, ranging from the documentation of the difficulties Egyptian women face while trying to get a divorce, to aiding Iraqi refugees in Damascus.

The Arab American News sat down with Fakih for a discussion about her career, work on Syria and views on the Middle East.

LF: I cover both Syria and Lebanon for Human Rights Watch, and I work primarily on the documentation of human rights abuses. The work that we have done in Syria has focused on abuses by both the government and opposition forces. In regard to government abuses, the work really runs the gamut. We have documented arbitrary detention, torture and death in custody. We’ve also done work on indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population, including both air and artillery attacks. What that means is that the government is using military force in a way that is not targeted against military objectives.

LF: Access to Syria has been restricted since the beginning of the crisis. We’ve made repeated requests to the Syrian government to be given access to the country, so that we could document, first-hand, what’s happening. The government has not allowed us an official visit to the country since the beginning of the crisis. However, we are able to document abuses by interviewing victims and witnesses of human rights violations. We do that by visiting opposition-held areas, where we interview people in their homes and villages about things they’ve seen. We also do it in refugee camps, where we can talk to people about the reasons why they left the country and what they saw before they left. In addition, we talk to people inside of Syria telephonically and through the internet. We also rely on satellite images. For instance, in March 2012, we did a piece on Baba Amr, Homs. Using satellite imagery, we could show that, in fact, the Syrian government had conducted wide-scale infinite shelling on residential areas.

LF: To the contrary, we were the first international non-governmental organization to report on abuses by the opposition in March 2012. Where we have found evidence of opposition abuses, we have documented it and reported it. We have condemned those abuses, and we continue to do so.

LF: It is quite clear that the scale of abuses by the government far outstrips the abuses by the opposition. That’s a factual assertion. But there is no downplaying the violations by the opposition. Where the opposition has carried extrajudicial executions, we’ve condemned that; we’ve called it a war crime. Where the opposition has desecrated religious sites, we have also documented that. There is absolutely no mincing of words when it comes to that.

LF: Lebanon has a policy of disassociation with the Syrian conflict, and there is a lot of concern that the conflict in Syria will lead to more instability in Lebanon. There has been a certain amount of restraint to ensure that the conflict does not spill over. We recently documented instances in which the Syrian government and opposition groups have indiscriminately shelled areas in Lebanon, which has resulted in civilian casualties. We are calling on the Lebanese government to ensure that border areas are secured, and to send clear indications to both sides in Syria that such incursions will not be tolerated.

TAAN: Tell us about your work in Lebanon.

LF: In Lebanon we have an ongoing project that examines the abuse of some vulnerable groups by the police. Here we’re looking at LGBT individuals, alleged sex workers and drug users. We have also found that abuse in detention continues. Individuals feel that there is very little they can do to penalize officers who are responsible for that abuse. This is one of the core issues we are looking at in Lebanon.

LF: We did a press release at the time of the raid, condemning anal examinations and the raid itself. The medical syndicate has said that it would never carry out such exams.  However, while there has been some movement to stop them, they have continued. This is something that we continue to work on.

LF: Lebanon is a signatory to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, and our assessment is that these anal examinations, in this context, amount to torture.  By continuing to conduct these examinations, Lebanon is actually in violation of its international human rights obligations. It is not just our assessment that it is torture. Other medical professionals have indicated that as well.

LF: We have continued to advocate for the protection of domestic workers under Lebanese labor law. There has been a robust local civil society that has been advocating for a basic contract that would ensure basic rights, such as having a day off.

Fakih says that she was inspired to work on human rights issues very early in her career. Post 9/11, she began work with civil rights groups to combat discrimination and bias against Arab-Americans by the U.S. government. She said that her interest has always been the Middle East and North Africa, and when the Arab Spring began, she felt compelled to go back to the Middle East and work on human rights issues in the region.

Despite empowering hardcore Islamists,  who are perceived as a threat to individual rights, Fakih thinks the Arab revolutions are a long process that will eventually result in more respect and appreciation to human rights in the region, because democracy is not “majoritarian totalitarianism.”

When asked if she thinks that unrest would spread to other countries in the Middle East, such as the monarchies in the Persian Gulf, Fakih replied, “I don’t want to speculate, but nobody is immune.”