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“Addressing the refugee crisis in Lebanon: Can better service delivery improve social stability?”
Abstract and Figures
The war in Syria has created millions of refugees. It has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis
since the Second World War, and has led to unprecedented demographic pressures and severe
socioeconomic and political stresses in neighbouring countries. Lebanon has been one of the hardest hit.
According to recent UNHCR statistics, there are more than one million registered Syrian refugees in
Lebanon.1
Today, Lebanon hosts the largest refugee population per capita in the world. It is estimated
that more than a quarter of the people in Lebanon are refugees.
2
As has been well documented (El Mufti 2014; Atallah et al. 2014; LCPS 2016), the burden of absorbing
refugees has largely fallen on municipalities and unions of municipalities. This massive influx of displaced
Syrians has increased pressure on the provision of vital public services at municipal level and heightened
tensions within host communities. In response, international support to municipal-level service delivery
has been increased. It aims to help prevent further deterioration of social stability and to foster the
legitimacy of local and national state authorities in the eyes of the host population.
This report focuses on a particular donor-supported initiative, the Lebanon Host Communities Support
Project (LHSP). It aims to:
analyse whether the long-held assumption among donors that improved service delivery can play
a crucial role in promoting social stability and legitimacy in conflict-afflicted and other difficult
environments bears out in the Lebanese context; and
explore how the LHSP works on the ground and the extent to which the LHSP is a development
intervention that has adopted a politically informed approach and has been able to “think and
work politically” (TWP CoP 2015).
The report draws on fieldwork we carried out in Lebanon in October 2015 as part of research on “Service
delivery and social stability in Lebanon and Jordan”3
for the UK Department for International
Development (DFID), on other research that the LHSP has commissioned and on relevant secondary
literature. It finds that service delivery can in fact contribute to these objectives.
Reinforcing other research that has begun to emerge on this, our findings suggest that process, or how
services are delivered, is likely to be more significant than outcomes, or what services are actually
provided. However, in the case of Lebanon, enhanced stability and legitimacy at the local level has not
accrued to higher levels of state authority.
We also find that the LHSP is an innovative programme in different ways and displays several
characteristics of a politically informed programme. However, the LHSP confronts several challenges as
well, and it may generate unintended consequences that can create or exacerbate tensions. We suggest
that these potential sources of tension need to be carefully tracked and addressed over time so as to
avoid doing harm.
The report is organised in three sections. The rest of Section 1 provides a brief overview of how the
Syrian refugee crisis has affected Lebanon’s municipalities. It also describes the LHSP in greater detail,
including its key components and underlying assumptions. The section then outlines the Service Delivery
and Social Stability in Lebanon and Jordan research project, situating it within two core areas of debate and engagement in international development: the links between service delivery, social stability and
legitimacy; and the challenge for international development actors to “think and work politically” (TWP).
Finally, Section 1 discusses the methodology of our research in Lebanon.
Section 2 discusses the findings on the links between service delivery, social stability and legitimacy,
especially at the municipal level. We look at sources of tension in Sarafand, Saadnayel and Sir Dannieh,
and explore who the main service providers are at the local level. We then seek to tease out what factors
have played a role in reducing tensions in the municipalities studied, and we ask whether and how
service delivery may play a positive role. The section also analyses how service delivery may help to foster
legitimacy. The section ends with a brief summary of the key findings from this component of the
research.
Section 3 looks at how the LHSP works and what lessons can be drawn from its implementation so far to
inform ongoing practice. In particular, this section explores whether the LHSP has been able to “think and
work politically”. To do so, we use the TWP framework developed by Dasandi et al. (2016), and ask how
different aspects of the LHSP relate to the framework’s four levels of analysis – political context, sector,
organisation, and individual. By way of conclusion for this report, the section provides some reflections
on the kinds of challenges that the LHSP may confront as it continues to evolve, and issues and concerns
that will be worth tracking over time.
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