Lebanon’s refugee crisis has highlighted the need for much closer coordination among the various organisations and local authorities involved in the response. A new study1 has laid the groundwork for a series of recommendations, set out in this briefing, on how national, local and international humanitarian actors can work together more effectively to enhance urban refugee responses in Lebanon and perhaps in other countries.

Lebanon 26 October 2016-- UN-Habitat working in partnership with UNICEF raised awareness about the benefits of handwashing with soap through entertaining advocacy events which targeted 850 children of different ages from the hosting communities and the Syrian Refugees.in Lebanon.

Beirut, 30 September 2016- The Habitat III National Report for Lebanon was launched during an event organized by the UN-Habitat Office in Lebanon and the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) recently at the General Directorate of Urban Planning.

The Regional Training Officers is a unit performing under the mandate of the Union of Municipalities (UoM), and comprises motivated local experts and technical persons. It aims at mobilizing public and civil local actors to collectively address local needs based on available resources. The RTO is a tool that aims to strengthen local governance, enhance service delivery, and mainstream planned interventions.

Beirut River 2.0 addresses the deterioration of the Beirut river and connected infrastructure, resulting in a negative impact on the surrounding communities and environment. It aims at Bringing Beirut River Back to Life and improving the living conditions of the communities on each side of the river.

Beirut 13 November 2015-- The Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, last Saturday made a sudden and brief visit to the Nabaa neighborhood, which falls within the Municipality of Bourj Hammoud in order to take a closer look at the living conditions of Syrian refugees and how this impacts Lebanese host communities especially the most vulnerable and marginalized.

Since 2007, UN-Habitat has been adopting a community based approach through establishing Regional Technical Offices (RTOs) at the level of Unions of Municipalities (UoMs).

The RTO is a unit performing under the mandate of the Union of Municipalities, and comprises motivated local experts and technical persons. The unit aims at mobilizing public and civil local actors to collectively address local needs based on available resources.

The RTO is a tool that aims to strengthen local governance, enhance service delivery, and mainstream planned interventions.

In July 2009, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Lebanon commissioned the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) to carry out a research on access to basic urban services (BUS) in the Adjacent Areas (AAs) of Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon. The research work program started in August 2009 and ended in April 2010. For the purpose of this research, AAs are informal Palestinian gatherings that are located on the boundaries of official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

The BUS covered are in the sectors of:

1) Water Provision

Lebanon is a small country with a total population of 4,223,553 (World Bank, 2010). Recent figures show that 87% of this population currently live in urban areas with the majority - estimated at 64% - residing in large agglomerations mostly in the metropolitan areas of Beirut and Tripoli (UN-HABITAT, 2008).