EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
El-Qobbeh is a predominantly residential neighbourhood located in eastern Tripoli. It falls within the jurisdiction of Tripoli Municipality, in Lebanon’s North Governorate. ElQobbeh neighbourhood as defined participatively in the field spans 1.78 km2. This profile however covers one part only of the neighbourhood: that is a 0.16 km2 pocket that remains when other parts of the neighbourhood are excluded for reasons of relatively low vulnerability, non-residential uses, or access constraints. The profiled pocket, located to the north-west of El-Qobbeh, constitutes the most vulnerable core of the neighbourhood.
The profiled area, hereafter referred to as “the neighbourhood” or “El-Qobbeh”, accommodates 6,385 residents, the vast majority (84.4 percent) of whom are Lebanese. Most of the non-Lebanese residents are Syrian (14.5 percent of the total population). A household survey sample shows that of the non-Lebanese households, more than three quarters arrived in Lebanon from 2011 to 2017, suggesting the extent to which the Syrian refugee crisis, which started in 2011, has contributed to recent demographic changes.
The area holds 552 buildings, mostly of one to three storeys, which contain more occupants per residential unit among Syrians (5.4 per unit) than among Lebanese (4.3 per unit).
The majority of units are rented; 64.4 percent of Lebanese households rent compared to a much higher 94.4 percent of non-Lebanese ones.
El-Qobbeh includes a historic quarter along the eastern side of Abu Ali River, with some houses dating back to the Mamluk era. Rural-urban migration in the 1950s led to the replacement of many of the original residents in the historic core by rural migrants from nearby regions. Subsequently, sectarian tensions during the 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War resulted in the progressive loss of the neighbourhood’s religious and cultural diversity. In the post-war period (until the establishment of relative calm after 2014), a series of armed politico-sectarian clashes between the adjacent neighbourhoods of El-Qobbeh and Tabbaneh on the one hand and Jabal Mohsen on the other negatively affected the area, exacerbating the sense of insecurity, dampening economic activity and intensifying poverty in the area.
Today, El-Qobbeh is a low-income, vulnerable neighbourhood, exhibiting a relative weakness in terms of public basic urban services and social services provision, as well as limited livelihood opportunities. Augmenting servicing by Tripoli Municipality, which is resource-constrained, some local and international non-governmental organizations are also involved in service provision and project implementation across different sectors, aimed at improving conditions for the neighbourhood’s residents.
A number of public and private facilities, located within or just outside the studied area, provide a wide range of healthcare and education services to the neighbourhood’s residents— often irrespective of nationality, age and gender. However, they face various challenges, including limited financial and human resources, shortage of equipment or personnel for specialized services, lack of awareness among residents about the existence of certain services, low user satisfaction with services accessed, and lack of will among residents to access services.
Children and youth are particularly vulnerable groups, experiencing various socioeconomic and other challenges, including child labour, child marriage, low attendance rates at secondary school and higher levels, scarcity of specialized healthcare and especially education services for children with disabilities, various safety and security concerns, and lack of vocational training opportunities or satisfying and stable work for youth.
Most of the functioning enterprises in El-Qobbeh comprise food and grocery stores, and—to a lesser extent—carpentry and mechanics workshops. Despite the presence of important landmarks and trip-attracting destinations, such as the Lebanese University, as well as the neighbourhood’s proximity to the old market of Tripoli, El-Qobbeh suffers from entrenched economic stagnation. In general, the livelihood situation for non-Lebanese residents appears to show more disadvantage than for Lebanese.
The condition of buildings in the area is mainly fair. However, major signs of stress are evident in the sloped historic quarter. The inadequate access to basic urban services in the neighbourhood is one factor contributing to substandard living conditions, including where this emerges from blocked and overflowing wastewater and stormwater networks. Water supply is costly, low quality and not always guaranteed; thus, residents have to buy water from external sources. While there are some notable instances of managed and safe open spaces in the neighbourhood, they are limited in number.
This report maps—and suggests the relative criticality across space of—interlinked social, economic and physical challenges in El-Qobbeh in the context of a poor, conflictaffected neighbourhood that has experienced a demographic pressure hike resulting from the Syrian refugee crisis. It offers a new area-based knowledge springboard that can be used to formulate evidence-led project proposals and longer-term plans for action.
The multisectoral, context-sensitive scope of this profile is intended to inform both immediate vulnerability mitigation measures and, taking into account the neighbourhood’s embeddedness in the wider city, longer-term sustainable urban development planning. UN-Habitat and UNICEF recognize that the profile’s value lies only in its uptake and use for these purposes by the municipality and other relevant partners, and look forward to facilitating productive discussions to this end.