Support to Public Institutions under the LCRP
Five years of conflict in Syria have resulted in a massive influx of refugees into Lebanon placing an enormous pressure on the country and its people. Hosting a large, increasingly poor, refugee community has continued to test the limits of infrastructure and public services that were already fragile before the crisis.
Lebanon currently hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world, with approximately 1.1 million Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR (representing over 25 percent of the Lebanese population). The spillover effects of the Syrian conflict are not only impacting Lebanon’s economy with cumulative losses estimated at 7.5b USD by end-2014 according to the World Bank, but are also challenging the entire country’s socio-economic infrastructure and institutional stability.The sudden and large increase in population is putting public institutions under extreme pressure to deliver basic services to an increasingly high number of vulnerable people, in a context of shrinking national resources. As a result, the access to and quality of basic services have significantly declined for the past few years and no less than USD 2.5 billion would be required to reinstate public services to their pre-Syrian conflict level.2 Protracted displacement represents a major development challenge for host communities because its costs and dynamics are not transitory, but have a long-lasting impact.
A traditional approach focusing exclusively on humanitarian assistance to refugees fails to increase self-reliance within the host communities and to strengthen national systems.
A more comprehensive development-humanitarian framework is therefore required to help mitigate some of the consequences of a protracted crisis and make long-term recovery easier to achieve through innovative development planning.
In order to address this challenge, the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP), a comprehensive and integrated strategy addressing long-term poverty and social tensions was elaborated by the Government of Lebanon with the support of its national and international partners. The LCRP delivers integrated and mutually reinforcing humanitarian and stabilization interventions to mitigate the negative impacts of the Syria crisis. Its emergency-response dimensions are integrated into a broader plan to support Lebanon’s stabilization by reinforcing the institutional capacities of national and local authorities. As a result, the strategic objectives 2 and 3 of the LCRP focus respectively on strengthening the capacity of national and local service delivery systems and on enhancing Lebanon’s economic, social, environmental and institutional stability.
Under the scope of this innovative and ambitious plan, more than 171.5 million USD was channeled to public institutions in 2015 in order to support service delivery, institutional capacity building and enhance societal resilience & stability.
This shows a significant increase from similar programming in 2014 which totaled 77.9 million USD, also marking a qualitative shift in the approach with stronger focus on building national capacities and institutional stability across all sectors.
The present brochure provides a detailed overview of the technical, operational, financial and staffing support provided to Lebanese public institutions by LCRP partners.