Beyond digitisation: Lebanon's judicial data deficit
Executive Summary
Lebanon's judicial reform debate has entered a decisive phase. Parliament adopted a judicial reform law on 31 July 2025; the European Union welcomed it while urging further comprehensive rule-of-law reform. At the same time, parliamentary discussions on a proposed general amnesty law point to a related pressure: unresolved cases, prolonged detention and overcrowded prisons. Both debates rest on caseloads the courts cannot currently measure. Public attention has focused mainly on independence, caseload and detention pressure. A quieter but essential question has received less attention: whether the state can see what is happening inside its own courts. Without baseline data on caseloads, processing times, workload and case outcomes, reform claims remain difficult to verify. The first reform question is therefore not only “how can Lebanon digitise the courts?” It is “what information does Lebanon need to manage court reform?” This policy paper proposes that entry point: a court-data pilot in Baabda. The purpose is not to create another technology project. It is to build the information infrastructure needed to diagnose delays, manage workload, protect privacy, communicate progress and prepare a national standard. Within a year, the pilot can give Lebanon its first verifiable reform baseline: six aggregate indicators published without personal or judge-level data, and the tested standard a national rollout needs. Lead responsibility sits with the Ministry of Justice, the Higher Judicial Council and Baabda court leadership. Predictable dispute resolution is part of restoring economic confidence; public court statistics are a direct, verifiable contribution to Sustainable Development Goal 16.
KEY FINDINGS
- Lebanon debates judicial reform without the data to manage it: the state's last published court statistics stop at the 2009/10 judicial year. Court information is reform infrastructure, not a technical afterthought.
- The evidence that exists is stark: Lebanon ranks 126th of 143 on civil justice in the 2025 WJP Rule of Law Index; a commercial dispute takes 721 days and 30.8% of the claim value to resolve; and more than 80% of detainees are held without a final judgment.
- The costs fall unevenly: delay prices the poorest users out of justice, and unpredictable contract enforcement is read by investors as risk.
- Comparable reforms in Ukraine and Rwanda point to the sequence that works: fix data and process first, pilot before scaling; software alone digitises dysfunction.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS
- Start with information, not software.
- Create a Judicial Data Pilot Steering Group.
- Publish aggregate indicators only.
- Simplify procedures before digitising them.
- Pilot in Baabda before any national build.
- Treat judges and clerks as co-designers.
- Settle the pilot's financing at authorisation, with sustainability beyond donor funding.
- Build a national standard from the tested pilot.
Read the full policy paper below