Aid for housing and shelter from Humanitarian International: the case of Syrian refugee tenants in the locality of Bar Elias in Lebanon
The study aims to provide an assessment of how Syrian refugees are received in Lebanon, and to provide clear guidance on the limitations and effects of humanitarian housing/shelter interventions in Lebanon on this population, and the possibility and means of circumventing these difficulties.
Rethinking the reception system for Syrian refugees in Lebanon
This study seeks to understand the conception and implementation of housing and shelter policies and actions by the international humanitarian sector in the case of the reception of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Starting from the case of (total or partial) payment by the humanitarian sector of rents for housing occupied by Syrian refugees for a set period, the aim is to examine the effects of this approach to access to housing at different levels: at the level of the private sector, on the dynamization of the local rental sector and the perception of the owners of the rented housing; at the level of the public sector and the place of local players in the implementation and monitoring of these projects; and at the level of the targeted refugee population and the adequacy of the aid with the refugees’ needs. The study thus seeks to highlight the discrepancies between short-sighted humanitarian aid policies and the sociological realities of refugees, actors and the local context, underlining the limits of contemporary humanitarian intervention in a global context of prolonged exile.
Adapting to sensitive terrain
This study examines the choice of humanitarian housing assistance model implemented in the context of the Syrian crisis in Lebanon and its impact on the local rental market. It focuses on one main field of study, that of the locality of Bar Elias in the Bekaa region. The actors involved in this work are: members of the municipality of Bar Elias, Syrian tenants, property owners and members of the local and international humanitarian community concerned with the issue of housing aid for Syrian refugees. This work is complemented by data on the impact of the Syrian presence in the Palestinian camp of Bourj El-Barajneh on the camp’s rental market, collected as part of doctoral research in 2017. Aware of the complexity of working in sensitive terrain, the variability of data and its availability, we opted for a mixed method allowing us to adapt to the realities of the field. The study is thus based on a mixed method involving both a qualitative approach (non-directive and semi-directive interviews) and a quantitative approach (questionnaire).
Fieldwork took place between November 2020 and January 2021. A total of seventeen interviews were conducted with staff from humanitarian organizations/agencies and eleven interviews were conducted with Lebanese authorities. Two questionnaires were addressed to Syrian households benefiting from the program in 2018 and 2019 whose contracts have expired or will expire in the coming weeks. These questionnaires provided figures on the program and an understanding of the households’ residential situation. Due to the health situation, the planned interviews with apartment owners were replaced by a questionnaire with open and closed questions, drawn up with 28 Bar Elias owners, former or current beneficiaries of the program.
Biography
Nicole Tabet is an architect and urban planner, and holds a PhD in geography and planning from the Territoires, Villes, Environnement et Société laboratory at Lille 1 University. Her research focuses on the dialectic of exclusion(s) and inclusion(s) of refugee camps in host cities, and more specifically Palestinian camps in Lebanese cities. She was also a post-doctoral fellow at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura of the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain).