The
broke out in 1975 and lasted 15 years. It demolished Lebanon and changed a lot the way it looks, especially Beirut. Most people got over the impact of the war, which were sleepless nights because of the sound of the bombings. However, there are people that are still suffering: the ones who went missing and their families. There are
17,000 people that disappeared during the civil war
. Their fate is yet unknown. Their families do not know anything about them, and no one is attempting to open the case and to conduct investigations. The bombings and the kidnappings are familiar to the people who lived during the Lebanese civil war. However, there’s one thing that also happened during the war which is not talked about very often, and that is that many Lebanese babies were put up for adoption.
Lebanese adoptees trying to reconnect with their roots
During the war, many parents felt that they cannot take care of their children anymore. Other kids got orphaned because of the death of their parents. A common solution was putting these babies up for adoption. People thought that this solution was better than putting them in orphanages. The adoptive parents were mostly from Western countries. Since the situation was much better in the West, adoption was a common alternative. According to a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Lebanon called
, 10,000 Lebanese babies and kids got adopted during the war. This NGO’s mission is to connect Lebanese adoptees to their biological families. Up until now, many Lebanese people had the chance to find their biological parent or parents.
The story of Dida Guigan
Dida Guigan was two weeks old when she left Lebanon with her French-Swiss adoptive family. Born in Rizk hospital in 1984, Guiga returned to Lebanon at the age of 26 to find her biological mother. The problem was that her official papers were falsified. On her birth certificate, it was indicated that her adoptive mother gave birth to her. She went to Rizk hospital to find more information about her but the people that are responsible for these cases told her that Guigan was not born there. So, she decided to pretend that she’s looking for a friend who she lost track of during the civil war. This is how she got access to the archives and found out everything about her. After many searches, she found her mother in 2012.
