Lebanon: looking back and learning from experience

Since 1991, Ile-de-France has been leading strong co-operation actions in favour of the Lebanon, and in particular in its capital region, the Beirut region.

The aim has been for this co-operation to uphold values: such as those of sustainable development and of extracting added value from human, natural, and heritage resources.

The actions have made it possible to train hundreds of deprived young people of Beirut in useful trades, to promote economic partnerships, to transfer know-how, to safeguard and lay out the city's main park, the Bois des Pins or "Pine Wood", and the multi-centennial cedar forest of Bécharré in the North of Lebanon, and to set up the "Ile-de-France business incubator" on its outskirts.

The co-operation work and the technical work has never been one-way; rather it has always raised questions about ourselves and about our own practices. Ile-de-France has much to learn from countries which, like the Lebanon, show such dynamism and creativity.

On this fifteenth anniversary of the return to peace, this issue of Les Cahiers retraces the action of IAURIF and of its partners in this country and in its capital region.