The quarterly dashboard summarizes the progress made by partners involved in the Lebanon Crisis Response and highlights trends affecting people in need. The Basic Assistance Sector in Lebanon is working to: OUTCOME 1) Ensure that Severely economically vulnerable populations have improved access to essential goods and services of their choice in a safe, dignified, and empowered manner while decreasing socio-economic vulnerability; OUTCOME 2) Ensure that populations affected by seasonal hazards & unexpected displacements are able to maintain safe access to goods & services; OUTCOME 3) Strengthen social safety net (NPTP) structures to serve most socio-economically vulnerable households by building on existing mechanisms and to improve social stability.
Sector Progress
In order to understand the different needs refugee households have, assess their living standards, and provide an accurate need based response; Basic Assistance sector partners’ prioritized households proling visits as key milestone to provide cash assistance as of 2015. Despite the introduction of the proGres based Desk Formula for targeting, households visits will continue as a key proling tool, major source of information and outreach to refugees.
Those visits continue to take place in 2016, whereby to date, 70% of the total registered population has been proled; 25,700 households were proled between June and August 2016, bringing progress to 52% of the sector proling visits target for 2016.
In addition, the Basic Assistance sector adopts cash as a main modality for assisting economically vulnerable households. 47,250 economically vulnerable households received multi-purpose cash assistance as of the end of August 2016. 47,250 Syrian refugee households (38% of the sector target), 10,500 Palestine Refugees from Syria (93% of the target) and 1,254 extremely poor Lebanese households (6% of the target) are supported by 15 cash actors across the country.
The expanded cash assistance programme is facilitating the access of those families to basic goods and services in safe and dignified manners. In addition to cash, some sector partners continue to distribute core relief items to families in need. Yet, it is worth mentioning that the number of cash actors operating under the sector has been increasing (5 in 2014, 11 in 2015, and 15 in 2016), in alignment with the sector strategy to monetize assistance and increase cost efficiency.
Nevertheless, Core Relief Items (CRIs) distributions help families living in remote areas, where cash is not possible or where markets do not exist, to get the basic items they need for their households such as mattresses, blankets, and kitchen sets. To date, more than 67,000 households have received CRIs.
Due to resource constraints, only severely vulnerable households are currently being targeted. 20% of the total registered refugee population currently receives multi-purpose cash assistance. Based on available resources, 25% can be reached by the end of the year. Although cash based interventions expanded notably in 2016, there are still more than 77,000 also identified as severely vulnerable but do not receive assistance. As funding becomes more available, partners are able to scale up further and reach out to more families considered living in critical poverty situations.
In preparation for this year’s winter, the sector is currently working on the identification of poor households exposed to cold and entitled for winter support. Around 210,000 vulnerable Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese households will be prioritized as last year, and assistance will be provided between October 2016 and February 2017. Economic vulnerability remains the major criteria against which winter assistance is provided. While resources in the regular multi-purpose cash programme does not allow the coverage of all families in need, the cash for winter assistance programme mitigates the impact by ensuring a wider coverage of the poor. All Syrian refugees identified as economically vulnerable (70%) are entitled to receive cash for winter assistance. The programme aims at helping poor families cover additional expenses to keep their families and shelters warm.