Unions of Municipalities as Enablers of Local Economic Development – Federation of the Northern Coastal and Central Matn Municipalities

The ‘Municipal Empowerment and Resilience Project’ (MERP) is a joint project by UN-Habitat and UNDP funded by the European Union. The project aims to strengthen the long-term resilience of subnational authorities in Lebanon as well as host communities, refugees and displaced persons affected by the Syrian Crisis.

Under MERP, UN-Habitat and UNDP commissioned United Cities of Lebanon to design a participatory, multi-stakeholder process to deliver three local economic development assessments for the Unions of Municipalities (UoMs) of Al-Fayhaa, Matn, and Tyre.

The overall goal of this local economic development assessment is to support UoMs and member municipalities to build a robust knowledge of the national and local governance systems, urban and territorial constraints and potential, existing economic and market structures, and the available human capital.