Recent developments in Lebanon have drawn renewed attention to the country’s social protection system. High and increasing levels of inequality, alongside low economic growth and weak economic prospects, have highlighted some of the defining features of social and fiscal policies in Lebanon, including the comparatively low levels of social assistance.

This report contributes to this renewed interest, and the related emerging policy dialogue, through a mapping and review of social protection in Lebanon, with a focus on social assistance. Commissioned by UNICEF and Lebanon’s Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA), it draws on a review of the literature and on interviews with key informants conducted in Beirut over the course of 2017–2018 to map the main elements of Lebanon's social protection system and review MoSA’s main social assistance programmes (for people with disabilities, for children in social institutional care, and the National Poverty Targeting Programme, NPTP), using ISPA’s Core Diagnostic Instrument (CODI).

Francesca Bastagli, Rebecca Holmes and Rana Jawad