Introduction

The Democratic Renewal Movement is a political movement founded in 2001, which at the time brought together a number of members of parliament, lawyers, engineers, physicians, business figures, trade unionists, social activists and university professors. The Movement has a fourteen-member Political Bureau, currently chaired by Mr Nassib Lahoud, with Mr Misbah al-Ahdab and Mr Camille Ziadé as vice-chairmen. The Movement's Youth Sector was established in 2007.

The Movement's aim has been, and remains, to create a Lebanese space for democracy and freedoms, to widen a non-sectarian civic sphere within Lebanese society, and to work for the lasting reform of political life by reviving citizenship, rehabilitating the practice of politics, and moving Lebanon towards greater justice and modernity while safeguarding the sovereignty of the state and the independence of the nation. To that end, the Democratic Renewal Movement works to influence every public policy of concern to Lebanese society through active and effective participation in public life — from stimulating and enriching public debate, to developing the ideas and proposals that produce tangible change in the general balance of forces in the political arena, to contesting elections.

The Movement's working method, no less important than the substance of its proposals, is rational and gradualist. The Movement is committed to applying this method alike within its own internal structures, in its relations with civil society and the other political forces, and in the relationship between society and the state.