Executive Summary
Lebanon is facing a severe humanitarian crisis exacerbated by economic turndown, widespread poverty, and displacement resulting from the escalation of the hostilities into war between Hezbollah and Israel on September 23, 2024. A ceasefire was reached in the early hours of November 27, 2024, for a 60-day period. The dramatic wave of violence on 23 and 24 September pushed up to one million people away from their homes in the South, Beirut southern suburbs or the Beqaa in the span of a few days. Almost symmetrical movements took place the days following the cessation of hostilities, mainly reflected in numbers, as many people could not return to their homes, either because they were damaged or located in territory still occupied by Israel.
There has been a significant scale up of the cash response, mostly through the expansion of the Government-lead safety nets. This paper focuses on the opportunities and pitfalls of the complementarities between emergency humanitarian cash response and existing safety nets. Therefore, while most CVA findings would apply across population groups, including Syrian refugees who have been equally affected by the conflict, this paper narrows the elements to the Lebanese population.
The aim of this paper is to deliver a nuanced conversation surrounding ways of cash in an emergency response, and in particular the added value of having Government safety nets and humanitarian cash mutually strengthen one another. As such, this paper seeks to enhance the humanitarian response and provide recommendations to support the development and implementation of novel policies and practices to improve the cash response in Lebanon.
