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1. Lebanon's Social Protection System Suffers Amidst the Current War: Urgent Action Needed!

Author:
Cynthia Saghir, Farah Al Shami, and Diana Tonea
Publication Date:
10-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This policy paper assesses Lebanon’s social protection response to the ongoing war and provides recommendations for policymakers to further develop this response and later improve the shock-responsiveness and -resilience of the country’s social protection system. The war in Lebanon has exacerbated the existing economic crisis, leading to mass displacement and increased poverty. The social protection system, already fragmented and underfunded, is struggling to meet the humanitarian needs of the affected population. The emergency response has been inadequate and limited to cash transfers and in-kind donations reaching only a small portion of those in need. Lebanon’s social protection system primarily relies on poverty-targeted social safety nets, which offer limited coverage and are heavily dependent on international funding. These safety nets have been expanded in response to the war but their reach remains relatively narrow. This implies an urgent need for a more comprehensive and coordinated approach to address the crisis – an approach that involves immediate humanitarian assistance as well as longer-term social protection measures that strengthen the system’s shock-responsiveness and -resilience. Linkages between the humanitarian and social assistance systems are also crucial for an integrated and sustainable approach. The paper concludes that for Lebanon's social protection system to become more fit for purpose, universal social security schemes should be prioritized, followed by a plan that tackles the issue of being composed of a complex web of different programs and registries. The government must therefore take decisive action to secure additional funding through domestic resources, improve coordination among stakeholders, and expand the reach of social assistance programs so that vulnerable populations receive the support they need to cope with the current crisis, and have their wellbeing and livelihood constantly protected.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, Conflict, and Social Protection
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

2. Lebanon’s Solar Rollout: In What Ways Has It Been an Unjust Energy Transition?

Author:
Yusra Bitar
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Lebanon’s national electricity supply has nearly collapsed, with the country’s residents experiencing constant power cuts over the past three decades and total blackouts since 2020.1 This has led residents across the country to find their “coping strategies” - which have become somewhat normalized - to deal with the national shortages, including purchasing or subscribing to diesel generators.2 More recently, these coping strategies have started to include solar energy installations, which have been deemed revolutionary for Lebanon,3 although in reality, the story is much more complex. As the climate crisis worsens and global institutions start to advocate and fund just transitions,4 it is imperative to reflect on what this means to prevent the repetition of collective injustices. This paper briefly outlines the solar energy landscape in Lebanon and asks some questions about the country’s solar rollout, including who benefits from it and how, as well as how this process repeats past energy injustices. It then presents some case studies of initiatives that have addressed some community energy needs while offering lessons for future energy planning. The paper concludes with recommendations to policymakers, civil society organizations, and the private sector as they transition to solar energy.
Topic:
Environment, Solar Power, and Energy Transition
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

3. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in Lebanon’s Palestinian Camps: Emotion and Reason, Solidarity and Militancy

Author:
Marie Kortam
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
In September and early October of 2023, I was in Lebanon on a working visit to the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp after the outbreak of bloody battles between the Fatah movement and the “Muslim Youth.”1 The clashes in Ain al-Hilweh began on 30 July 2023, following the assassination of Abu Ashraf al-Armushi, Fatah’s security chief for southern Lebanon. The Palestinian National Security Forces, affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, are responsible for protecting and managing the security of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and communicating with the Lebanese army to solve any incidents that occur. The clashes continued intermittently until late September, and stopped completely as Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began, with rogue elements on both sides promising to resume their conflict after the Gaza War. This was not the first time that Ain al-Hilweh camp has witnessed an armed conflict between Fatah and the "Muslim youth." This battle was one round in a series of escalations between Fatah and various Islamist militant groups which began with the establishment of Osbat al-Ansar in 1990, then with more extremist groups that splintered from al-Ansar after it concluded a peace agreement with Fatah in 2002. In reality, this battle was a conflict between Fatah and Hamas over control of the camp, as part of their fundamental struggle over Palestinian legitimacy. One hypothesis suggests that the recent clashes in Ain al-Hilweh resulted from an attempt by a party with no stakes in reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas to scuttle the dialogue conference in Egypt held on 30 July 2023. Fatah members, residents, and activists in the camp claim that Hamas is fighting “with another’s sword” against Fatah, that is, using unrecognized Islamic groups in the camp such as the Maqdisi group led by Fadi Al-Saleh, a close affiliate of Hamas who works with Turkish non-governmental organizations and supports the "Muslim Youth" groupings. Historically, the camps in Lebanon were under the control of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and still are. However, since Mahmoud Abbas took over the administration of the Palestinian Authority, the Fatah movement, the PLO, and all Palestinian national institutions have marginalized refugees and failed to prioritize their cause. As a consequence, Palestinian refugees became increasingly discontent with Abbas’ positions, even those within the ranks of the Fatah movement, albeit this discord was not always made public. As for Hamas, it lost its base in the Yarmouk camp in Syria after the rift between it and the Syrian regime with the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, which made it search for another base among the refugees. Ain al-Hilweh camp was one of its areas of interest, as the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon where Islamist movements such as the Osbat al-Ansar and the Mujahid Movement were present, making the camp fertile ground for Islamist activity. Hence, it became logical for Hamas to compete with Fatah over governance of the Lebanese camps, the most important of which is Ain al-Hilweh as the capital of the Palestinian diaspora. This article presents a preliminary analysis of the perception of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon towards Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the forms of solidarity with Gaza, both as socio-political solidarity and as militant engagement at a moment of intense competition between Fatah and Hamas. The article also raises the issue of the mobilization of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Hamas's attempts to establish influence in the camps in the aftermath of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The article is based on official and informal meetings, observations during field visits to the camps in early October and November 2023, and a review of news coverage.
Topic:
Refugees, Solidarity, Hamas, Armed Conflict, and Al-Aqsa Flood
Political Geography:
Middle East, Palestine, Gaza, and Lebanon

4. Lebanon’s Unregulated Forests: How Tragedies Can Ignite Homegrown Transformations

Author:
Sammy Kayyed
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
One could argue that Akkar, more than any other region in Lebanon, epitomizes both the country’s incredible natural heritage and its spiraling economic and political crises. While Lebanon sets records for the loss of purchasing power, rapid financial collapse, social injustice, and frequency of government deadlock, Akkar regularly emerges as the most challenged across multiple dimensions of poverty.1 ,2 Yet, it is considered to have the richest forests, biodiversity, and water resources in a country that regionally stands apart for these attributes.3 Separations between natural wealth and socio-economic poverty are being joined by newfound opportunities, materializing over the last three years, with residents seeking to relieve their financial troubles by cutting trees. With little to no state regulation in forests, Akkar has become a hotbed for this understandable but possibly ecologically irreversible recourse. This paper tells the story of how the greatest rate of forest loss in Akkar’s recorded history is being met by local activists organizing, resisting forest over-exploitation, garnering resources, and onboarding the wider community in an unprecedented fashion. Their acts of solidarity happened in the face of recent conflict and casualty over forest resources stressed by climate extremes. Given the sensitive nature of the paper, the author chose to keep interlocutors, contacted between September and December 2022, anonymous.
Topic:
Environment, Natural Disasters, Forest, and Wildfires
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

5. The Lebanese diaspora and the upcoming elections: Lessons from the 2018 voting

Author:
Georgia Dagher
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This report examines the choices of the Lebanese diaspora in the 2018 parliamentary elections—the first time out of country voting was allowed—in order to offer some insights on the diaspora’s vote potential impact in the upcoming elections. Wide efforts to encourage the diaspora to vote, led by Lebanese activists all over the world, have succeeded in getting over 225,624 Lebanese on the out of country voters’ list—almost a threefold increase from the last elections in 2018.
Topic:
Diaspora, Elections, Voting, Participation, and Identity
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

6. Impacting policies: Waste management and advocacy in Lebanon

Author:
Samar Khalil
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Since 1994, Lebanon's waste management policy has consisted of implementing a series of emergency plans, each partially and poorly executed, and extended until a new crisis emerged. Devoid of any measures to move to long-term, sustainable planning, these local emergency fixes to the lingering waste crisis have incurred high financial costs for citizens as well as negative environmental, health, and safety impacts. Lebanese citizens are paying a high price for solid waste management (SWM). Lebanon spends $154.5 to manage every ton of solid waste, compared to Algeria, Jordan, and Syria which spend $7.22, $22.8, and $21.55, respectively (Human Rights Watch, 2020). The solid waste sector ranked first in terms of environment-related government spending in Lebanon, with a total of $647 million spent between 1998 and 2008 (Arif & Doumani, 2014). Expenditures on SWM reached $2.2 billion between 1996 and 2015 (Akiki, 2019). Despite these high expenditures, the cost of environmental degradation (COED) from the solid waste sector was around $66.5 million (0.2% of national GDP) in 2012 (Arif & Doumani, 2014), increasing to $200 million (0.4% of GDP) in 2018 (MoE, UNDP, 2019). To date, around 20% of the waste is recovered, out of which only 6% reaches recycling facilities, 36% is landfilled, and 44% is dumped in around 940 open dumps scattered throughout the country (MoE, UNDP, UNHCR, UNICEF, 2020). At the same time, the private company contracted since 1994 to collect and treat much of Lebanon’s waste – Sukleen (part of the Averda Group) – has generated over $170 million in revenues per year, one of the highest waste management revenues in the world (Chaaban, 2016). Sukleen has held a monopoly in waste management in Beirut and Mount Lebanon since the 1990s, when it won a contract for building, testing, and operating a waste incinerator located in the city of Amrousiyeh. Operation at that site was short-lived as angry residents burned the plant down in 1996, but through other contracts, Sukleen came to handle around 50% of the waste generated nationally, serving around 400 municipalities (Chaaban, 2016). The company’s contract was renewed three times by the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) without an open tender. With each contract renewal, collection and processing fees increased, all paid using transfers from the Independent Municipal Fund, an intergovernmental grant system that disburses taxes and fees to municipalities. Successive plans for integrated solid waste management (ISWM) – in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2019 – never bore fruit. Instead, Sukleen’s monopoly persisted in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, with its contracts managed by the central government rather than the municipalities. Meanwhile, in other regions, municipalities and federations of municipalities managed their waste following a decentralized approach, with international aid being channelled to finance Mechanical-Biological Treatment (MBT) plants for sorting and composting, achieving low diversion rates from landfills and dumps (Azzi, 2017).
Topic:
Governance, Decentralization, Waste, and Management
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

7. Unpacking solid waste management policies in Lebanon: Public policies based on power-sharing politics rather than evidence-based decision-making

Author:
Cynthia Kreidy
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
iles of garbage have again been accumulating on the streets of major Lebanese cities.1 2 A scenario that is all too familiar and takes us back to 2014 when Sukleen – the company contracted to manage solid waste in Beirut and Mount Lebanon – halted its operations and streets were filled with piles of garbage for months. 3 Once again Lebanon is on the verge of another waste crisis, but this time from a more vulnerable and dire state. Solid waste has been ravaging the streets of Beirut and Mount Lebanon for numerous reasons. These include the contractor not getting paid, the high cost of transportation which reduces the frequency of collection,4 the closure of landfills which are at capacity, or even the obstruction of works at the landfills due to trespassers waiting to collect metals and other valuable materials to sell them amid Lebanon’s heaviest economic and financial crises.5 The absence of sustainable and integrated solid waste management (SWM) in Lebanon has denied citizens their right to health.6 Open dumping and burning, which have been occurring due to the inaction of regulatory authorities, have negative health impacts on nearby residents. Some individuals have reported respiratory illnesses and skin problems, while others complain about bad mental health.7 Additionally, open burning could be linked to cancer and heart disease. These practices have disproportionately affected poor communities, given that burning sites are often in their vicinity and that they cannot afford health care.8 Moreover, the cost of environmental degradation due to the lack of a comprehensive SWM plan was equivalent to $66.5 million in 20129 ) and $200 million in 201810 . The cost of environmental degradation is reflected by a loss of welfare demonstrated by the degradation in the quality of life, economic losses, and environmental losses, among others.11 The solid waste sector contributed to around 10% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2011, largely due to open dumping and burning across the country.12 13 An integrated solid waste management strategy at the national level is the only long-term solution to the solid waste problem. In the absence of such a plan, and following the solid waste crisis in 2015, several grassroots movements, civil society organizations and municipalities have tried to remedy the absence of a national plan by leading small-scale interventions based on sorting at source and waste valorization in order to minimize volumes of waste sent to landfills.14 15 16 However, none of these projects is implementable at the national level, since these initiatives rely on a municipality’s rare, and voluntary will. This paper employs a systems analysis to explore how solid waste mismanagement has been an intentional political decision-making process tailored to nurture and protect dysfunctionality through elite capture and clientelism. The hypothesis will be presented using a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) which will then be analyzed and validated via case studies involving the municipalities of Beit Mery, Dhour Choueir, and Brih.
Topic:
Leadership, Waste, and Resource Management
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

8. Recycling Policies from the Bottom Up: Waste Work in Lebanon

Author:
Elizabeth Saleh
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Discussions on waste policy in Lebanon tend to focus on the country’s corrupt practices and the health and environmental impact of bad waste management. This paper examines an overlooked aspect: the story of waste pickers — many of whom are economic or forced migrants — who are essential to Lebanon’s garbage management. Through an ethnographic study of a group of underage waste pickers, it argues that it is time for policy debates on garbage in Lebanon to integrate the perspective of waste workers.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Labor Issues, Recycling, and Garbage
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

9. COVID-19 Vaccination in the Time of Austerity: How and for Whom?

Author:
Joelle M. Abi-Rached and Pascale Salameh
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
As countries begin to roll out vaccination for COVID-19, the Lebanese caretaker government has yet to provide details about its vaccination strategy, raising concerns about its ability to provide vaccines due to the country’s economic and governance crisis. This paper, written by public health professionals, raises a number of questions about the vaccination strategy that the government should address and calls for an open, inclusive, and transparent process to placate the worries of citizens given the privatization and politicization of the country’s health sector.
Topic:
Public Health, Vaccine, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

10. Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Physician Safety and Coverage in Lebanon

Author:
Nadim El Jamal, Taghrid Hajjali, and Elie Al-Chaer
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Similar to other countries, Lebanon experienced the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic imposed on its healthcare system. Physicians, among other healthcare workers, felt the large toll of the pandemic. The growing number of physicians infected with the coronavirus has uncovered gaps in the policies and laws meant to protect and ensure physician safety. These include gaps in physician coverage for healthcare, disability, and death, in addition to particular vulnerabilities of trainee physicians, along with the absence of specific laws, strategies, and agencies to ensure the safety of the healthcare work environment. This paper highlights these gaps and proposes solutions to address them.
Topic:
Security, Public Health, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon