Beginning from 2013, International Alert (IA) carried out a two-year action research project to inform communities, donors and policy-makers in Lebanon of effective ways to strengthen local resilience to proactively address communities’ systemic marginalisation. Central to the research’s aim and approach was to reflect the voices of communities that are often unheard or overlooked, with a view to engaging them with one another on key issues affecting their daily lives. The project focused on three regions: Wadi Khaled and Hermel (in the north and east of the country, respectively, regions bordering with Syria) and Badghan (in Mount Lebanon).
This report advocates for strengthening the resilience of Lebanese communities with the explicit understanding that this resilience is not merely the ability to adapt to worsening circumstances, but a developmental investment in and strengthening of marginalised communities to become equipped with the skills, infrastructure and resources that allow them to proactively address adversities in ways that can reduce future vulnerability. This reframing of resilience is based on IA's action research in partnership with the Permanent Peace Movement through the project ‘Harnessing local capacities for resilience in the face of the Syrian crisis’. The research looked into understanding people’s perspectives on the conditions in their regions before and after the influx of refugees into those areas. Building on that, workshops on conflict analysis and advocacy were conducted with each group in their locales before bringing them together to jointly work on an advocacy plan.
