Situation Report: August 31, 2006.
Following years of calm and progress, hostilities suddenly broke out in Lebanon as of July 12, 2006. This has exerted enormous pressure on the Lebanese government, and the international community to cope with a major expanding humanitarian crisis. According to the Higher Relief Commission, there are to date over 1,032 individuals killed in the current hostilities and 3980 injured and 915,762 displaced. Of those, 142,762 are located in Internally Displaced person (IDP) centers (mainly 834 schools around the country and around 565,000 are residing with host families and in religious buildings. Over 9,000 housing units, 600 km, 77 bridges and 900 private/commercial enterprises have been bombed and destroyed.
UNDP, through its extensive networks both at the central and regional levels has been providing crucial support to the government of Lebanon throughout this crisis. In addition to the CO team, UNDP has mobilized its Policy Advisory Units based at the Prime Minister’s office, and other key ministries, including finance, economy, environment, Social Affairs, displaced and others. These have played a crucial role in not only supporting the Lebanese government as it addresses the massive humanitarian crisis but in coordinating with the UN family and its network of agencies.
Moreover, UNDP as the only UN agency with regional programmes and sub-offices outside the capital was able to rapidly mobilize on the ground. This includes the post conflict oriented programmes of the South and the Chouf, Aley-Babda (Middle), and the North Akkar poverty programme. Through these ongoing programmes, UNDP has established a large and quite comprehensive government and local authorities’ network that resulted in an immediate interaction to provide support to communities in distress. In addition, UNDP has a vast network and strong solid relations with many civil society organizations, including coalition NGOs such as Arab NGOs Network for Development, Civil Campaign for Relief, NGO Collective, Movement Social, Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections, Lebanese Transparency Association, Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, Lebanese Union of Disabled Persons, etc..
UNDP Assistance
UNDP has supported the Government of Lebanon’s humanitarian relief efforts in six ways:
1. Emergency Response Coordination: Government Support and Networking
Central Level: The agency mandated with emergency response at the central level is the High Relief Committee (HRC) operating under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s office. The HRC established initially to address humanitarian needs following the end of the civil war was understaffed and due to be dismantled. It was incapable of addressing a humanitarian crisis of the current magnitude. UNDP expediently deployed a number of professionals to support the HRC in the different aspects of relief coordination and networking.
Regional Level: The same type of managerial and information assistance is provided to local authorities, and municipalities, mainly in the Chouf, Aley-Babda areas, where a large number of IDPs are located but also to Tyre municipality in the South where the IDPs are moving in a war zone, and where convoys just started to reach, and require coordination of distribution.
2. Emergency Relief Distribution
Within the first days of the crisis, UNDP utilized its solid presence and strong foundation in Mount Lebanon through its UNDP project with the Ministry of Displaced and advanced $500,000 of its own resources setting up a complete system of emergency relief distribution in close coordination with the Relief Committee in the Mountain and under the supervision of the governors in these regions. UNDP is renting and managing two warehouses in Aley and Chouf areas, managing local staff, and procuring non-food items (NFIs) locally. UNDP has been able to distribute to more than 69,000 IDPs in Chouf and Aley-Ba'abda regions and is continuing its distribution to an increasing numbers of IDPs in these regions. Furthermore, UNDP also utilized its presence in South Lebanon to distribute tons of NFIs to major cities and towns in the South through the UN convoys with the support of UNDP office in Tyre and UNDP national staff. It also fully utilized its strong relations and networking with local NGOs to distribute to more than 30 thousand IDPs in Beirut and other regions in the southern suburbs and Mount Lebanon such as Metn, Kisirwan and Jbiel. UNDP was able to distribute NFIs to more than 180,000 IDPs in a very short period of time and in a very efficient quick manner as the emergency conditions required.
The UNDP “Emergency Relief Project” has delivered the following supplies to IDPs:
- Family kits: (diapers, protective napkins, Baby feeder, cerelac, etc.)\
- Hygiene kits: (Dettole, Soap, Flash, Water, etc.)
- Kitchen kits: (Forks, Spoons, Plates, Gaz, etc.)
- Mattresses
- Showers
- Food Items and Water
3. Information and Coordination
The long-standing projects with ministries, and local authorities through the regional programmes, have enabled UNDP to be the gateway for newly deployed UN agencies and international NGO staff.
As part of this system, information on displaced people was compiled, aggregated and geo-referenced to enable proper mapping to help relief operations. A new and updated map of IDP centers was created by UNDP and shared with the HRC, individual UN agencies and posted on the virtualhic. Base maps for other maps were provided to OCHA while local GIS experts have been made available by UNDP to UNJLC and OCHA.
4. Recovery
UNDP is working on assisting the Lebanese government for the development of an Early Recovery programme and Recovery Planning through:
1. Providing technical support to the Lebanese government for the establishment of a Recovery Unit at the Prime Minister’s Office for aid coordination and management, communication as well as planning of recovery and reconstruction.
2. Developing a programme consisting of six early recovery quick-impact projects to be implemented immediately.
3. Coordinating with the Policy Advisory Units in the Key Ministries and the Prime Minister’s Office the writing of an analytical paper on the assessment and impact of damages in order to define the priorities of early recovery programme.
4. Coordinating with UN agencies the recovery planning, through the establishment of a recovery cluster led by UNDP.
5. UNDP Administrative Support to Other UN Agencies
Upon arrival to Beirut UNDP Lebanon provided the OCHA mission the required logistical and administrative services.
Lebanon
