The Lebanon case study was produced as part of a Technical Assistance Mission supported by the initiative “Guidance Package on Social Protection across the Humanitarian-Development Nexus” (SPaN). It is jointly led by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO), Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and DirectorateGeneral for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR) with the support of DEVCO Unit 04 and the MKS programmethe SPaN initiative.

Between November 2017 and February 2018 the initiative launched a Technical Assistance (TA) expert mission to review and develop options for how the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis (EUTF Syria) could support the development of a social assistance programme in Lebanon to help the most socio-economically vulnerable Syrian refugees and Lebanese host populations affected by the Syrian crisis. The EUTF’s requirement was that the action should design systematic and long-term poverty-alleviation mechanisms which target both Syrian refugees and the Lebanese population, while also further developing the national social assistance system within an emerging national social protection framework, drawing from the lessons learnt from humanitarian cash programming in Lebanon.

The outcome was the action document “EUTF support to social assistance to vulnerable refugees and host communities affected by the Syrian crisis in Lebanon” for a 30-month programme with a budget of EUR 52 million, which was approved by the EUTF Operational Board in June 2018.

This case study applies the SPaN approach to facilitate the transition or transformation of a short-term emergency safety net into a sytemic and longer-ter poverty alleviation mechanism by aligning service provision through NPTP and MCPA to foster complementary national safety nets able to cover socio-economic vulnerabilities of both, Lebanese and non-Lebanese. It is divided into five parts: 

                                                       Scene setting

                                                       What it might look like

                                                       How it could be done

                                                       Summary of assessed response options

                                                       What happens next