Post-Conflict Social and Livelihoods Assessment in Lebanon

The Israeli July 2006 war exposed the Lebanese population to disastrous conditions. It has profoundly affected residents’ livelihoods through bringing down access to services, infrastructure and natural resources. Responding to these emerging problems poses further challenges for the Lebanese government and society. In this respect, different emergency measures have been undertaken to address the arising needs, starting with assessing physical, economic and social damages.
As a contribution to identifying short and medium term intervention needs, the World Bank initiated undertaking a Post-Conflict Social and Livelihoods Assessment in Lebanon (SALA) in order to analyse the population conditions from a livelihoods and social perspective. More specifically, the objective of this study is to inform strategic planning processes that are related to post-conflict reconstruction. As such, it is aimed at eventually identifying orientations for social policies and interventions to assist those impacted by the last conflict and the vulnerable segments of the society.
SALA also attempts at filling a serious information gap, as Lebanon suffers from lack of data in general, and on livelihoods and social conditions in particular. This dearth of information makes it harder to promptly respond to emergency situations and accordingly design recovery programs, as is the case today. In this respect, this study aims at answering the following main questions:
• how have livelihoods been affected by the war
• who are the most vulnerable segments of the society
• what social programs existed prior to the war
• what were the emergency and recovery initiatives
• major proposed interventions
The SALA framework can be used for evaluation in the future. At a later stage, the protocol can be amended to extend the SALA framework in order to assess new developments, such as the progress in the reconstruction programs, the implementation of new social programs or the impact of the Paris III conference. This extension will benefit from this research as it provides the possibility for an evaluation of the developments of livelihood indicators over time, taking the results of this study a baseline.