The Philippine Embassy in Beirut is headed by Ambassador Raymond R. Balatbat, who was appointed to the position by President
Rodrigo Duterte on December 3, 2020. Prior to his current post, Balatbat, a career diplomat who has served with the Philippine foreign service since 1997, served as the Executive Director of the Office of Middle East and Africa Affairs at the
Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), and prior to that served at Philippine diplomatic missions throughout the Islamic world, including at the embassies in
Bandar Seri Begawan and
Jakarta. His appointment was confirmed by the
Commission on Appointments on December 16, 2020, and he presented his credentials to President
Michel Aoun on June 9, 2021. A notable diplomat who served at the embassy was
Bernardita Catalla, who served as ambassador between 2018 and 2020. Known for championing the welfare of
Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) throughout her career, Catalla died while in office on April 2, 2020 due to
COVID-19 amidst a
pandemic of the disease. The embassy's activities center around providing to the many OFWs in Lebanon, which began on November 7, 2000 with the opening of a Filipino Workers’ Resource Center to help provide legal aid to OFWs in the country. The treatment of OFWs in Lebanon is a regular point of contention for the embassy and for the DFA in general: in 2005, it protested a raid in Beirut conducted by the Lebanese government against OFWs despite them being legally documented, while in 2011, it went so far as to encourage people to not go to the country for work. In 2017, in one of Catalla's first acts as ambassador, the registration of Filipinos in Lebanon was swiftly resumed after it was discovered that the embassy had not been keeping track of how many Filipinos were in the country — by the following year, more than 12,000 OFWs were registered and given registration cards. The embassy has also facilitated the repatriation of Filipinos affected by war and other conflicts in Lebanon, which it did in 2006, and in 2019, which Catalla personally led. This has also extended to facilitating the evacuation of Filipinos from Syria as a result of
that country's civil war. The embassy also engages in promoting Filipino culture in Lebanon, as well as promoting cultural links and exchanges between the two countries. These include hosting a screening of the 2002 film
Kailangan Kita in 2013, organizing Lebanon's first-ever exhibition of Filipino art — primarily the works of Marvin Baldemor, son of
Manuel Baldemor — the following year, and presenting the Filipino translation of
The Prophet by
Kahlil Gibran, prepared by
Ruth Elynia Mabanglo, to
his eponymous museum in 2018. ==See also==