In Lebanon, citizens rely on cars for daily life due to the lack of public transportation. Yet for years, the government-run car registry remained largely shut down due to corruption, making it nearly impossible to legally register vehicles. Despite this, authorities began imposing heavy fines on drivers without license plates—punishing people for a failure caused by the state itself.

Traditional protests had failed to bring about change, and public frustration was growing. Transparency International Lebanon saw an opportunity to turn this injustice into action—by empowering citizens to protest the system using the very thing denied to them: the license plate.

The campaign transformed the missing license plate—once a symbol of institutional failure—into a tool for public protest. Through a microsite and pop-up store, citizens submitted personal grievances about the corrupt vehicle registry system. These messages were printed onto custom protest plates and displayed on their cars, turning everyday vehicles into moving billboards. Over 8,000 plates were distributed, culminating in a nationwide convoy that made the protest impossible to ignore.

The campaign provided a peaceful, scalable way for citizens to hold the government accountable. As a direct result, the registry was reopened, over 50 corrupt officials were arrested, and a digital appointment system was introduced—proving that collective citizen action can lead to real, systemic reform.