“GIL” was founded in 1996 in Beirut, and its establishment and official notification were published in the Lebanese Official Gazette on 1 July 1998. The association was established with the aim of encouraging dialogue and engagement in public affairs among Lebanese citizens, grounded in the principles and values of human rights.

The association was founded and chaired by Mr. Hekmat El Zein, alongside an active group of civil leaders representing the post–Lebanese Civil War generation. They contributed to laying the foundations of the organization by developing its programs and self-financing its activities in pursuit of its goals. The founding members were: Mona Ahmad Wehbi, Hekmat Hassan El Zein, Bilal Youssef Chehade, Maher Youssef Salloum, and Jihad Jamil Issa. Hekmat El Zein also served as the association’s representative to the Lebanese government.

Hekmat El Zein comes from an academic, political, and literary family. He specialized in political science in Canada and Lebanon and graduated from the Lebanese American University (LAU) in 1994. He began his professional career early in the media field, assuming in 1995 the position of Editor-in-Chief of Hurriyat magazine, published by the foundation of the late President of the Lebanese Republic, René Moawad.

In his writings, El Zein focused on issues of democracy, public freedoms, and rebuilding civil discourse in Lebanon after the civil war. He is regarded as one of the youngest editors-in-chief in the Arab world and among the early journalists concerned with human rights who contributed to introducing the concept of investigative journalism to a new generation of journalists, while promoting the principle of the right to access information in Lebanon and the region.

In addition to his opinion and issues columns in leading Lebanese newspapers such as An-Nahar and As-Safir, he was actively involved in international civil society work, representing Lebanon at several international non-governmental conferences. He also contributed to launching initiatives aimed at strengthening citizenship and human rights, and participated in founding a number of Lebanese civil society organizations working in the fields of human rights and anti-corruption, including the association “No Corruption”.

Hekmat El-Zein has offered intellectual contributions, writings, and lectures on the culture of accountability and transparency in public affairs, published in GIL publications and elsewhere. Among his early media initiatives was the founding of elsohof.com in 2000, the first critical platform dedicated to reviewing journalism in Lebanon and the Arab world, and the only one of its kind at the time, before it ceased operations in 2005.

On the professional level, since the early 2000s he has founded a group of companies specializing in publishing, digital business, and content marketing, operating between Beirut, Dubai, Riyadh, and London. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of these companies.

In 2020, he launched the website hunabeirut.com, in which he held the position of publisher and editor-in-chief. “Huna Beirut“ is an independent media platform concerned with political, intellectual and cultural analysis, and constitutes an open space for dialogue about international relations and the future of the state and society in Lebanon and the Arab world.