On 16 December, Rebecca Dykes' body was found strangled and dumped by a motorway in Beirut, Lebanon. Aged 30, she was working in the country's capital as a programme and policy manager for the Department for International Development (DFID).

An Uber driver was arrested and subsequently admitted to attempting to rape Dykes before killing her, according to the Guardian.

The murder of the British embassy worker made international news and sparked intense media coverage in Lebanon, but she's sadly far from an anomaly. The murders of three Arab women were reported in northern Lebanon in the same week, bringing the total to four victims in just seven days.

This alarming level of violence prompted women's rights activists to call for more attention to be given to the issue. And so, last Saturday - two weeks after Dykes was found - dozens of people gathered outside Beirut's national museum to light candles and mourn for the victims.

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'Many of us had tears in our eyes,' Maya Ammar, one of roughly eight activists who organised the event, tells ELLE. 'One of the victim's family was there, so it was very emotional. We were sad, but at some point our mood turned into anger, and we started chanting.'

Shouts of 'Don't tell me to cover up. Tell him not to rape me,' rang out through a megaphone.

The title of the vigil was 'She Could Have Been Me' because, as Ammar explains, 'you really feel like you could have easily been any of these women; in any of their shoes.'

She adds: 'You read a story about a woman killed once every month, maybe. That's what we're used to in Lebanon, but four in a week is unusual.'

Those who attended lay white roses in front of pictures of the four women, lined the steps with candles, and held placards that read 'Down with organised male violence' in Arabic. The campaigners not only demanded better laws to protect women - a statement published on Facebook ahead of the event said that Lebanon lacked the 'legal, social and political systems' to protect women against 'systemic' violence - but also hoped to challenge toxic masculinity that is pervasive throughout Lebanese society.

'[Some] men are threatened by the progress being made by women,' explains Ammar, 'and maybe they don't necessarily murder their partners or sister, but they know they're about to lose a lot of privileges which they take for granted. So I think some of them fight back by being more violent and aggressive in how they treat the women in their lives.'

Days before Dykes' murder, 22-year-old Yaman Darwish was found shot in the chest and her husband was detained. The investigation showed she sustained a broken chin, and had been hit on the head with a vase, as well as choked.

In the same week, a Lebanese man killed his mother-in-law, and wounded his wife, after shooting them both inside their home, while a 15-year-old pregnant Syrian girl was found dead with a bullet in her neck. Her husband, the suspect, has denied killing her, security sources said.

On top of this, Ammar received a news alert about another victim on the night of the vigil. 'We were picking up our stuff up and preparing to leave when we heard a woman, Malak Al Mokdad, had been stabbed, that she died and investigations are now ongoing. The question is always, who's next? We know it's not going to end anytime soon.'

Whether it's harassment, catcalling or murder, sexual and/or physical violence is a daily concern for Lebanese women.

But, as Ammar explains, sexual violence is far less likely to be properly reported. 'What happened with Rebecca is not something that is usually highlighted in Lebanon - rape, sexual assault and harassment are more taboo than, say, family violence.'

This is backed up by a 2017 ABAAD survey, the Beirut-based women's rights group , which found that one in four women have been raped in Lebanon. Less than a quarter of women who faced sexual assault reported it.

Lebanon passed a law making domestic violence a criminal offence in 2014, after a years-long campaign by civil society groups, yet the country remains fraught with dangers for women; namely it fell short of criminalising marital rape and child marriage remains legal.

Ammar's solution?

'We need to talk about it,' she says, 'and we most definitely need to talk more about rape.'

'I also hope society acknowledges that male violence exists and that women are victims of this violence on a daily basis, not just when they're murdered. The regular abuse and harmful comments we are subjected to is still not taken seriously. This isn't a problem unique to Lebanon, of course; it's a world-wide issue.'

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Louise Donovan
Deputy Digital Editor
Louise Donovan is the Deputy Digital Editor at ELLE UK, with a focus on international women's rights, global development and human interest stories. She's reported from countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.