Working paper designed to facilitate discussions and stimulate reflections on strategies for promoting female labor force participation in Lebanon.

The Gender Statistical Profile (GSP) is an annual publication of the UN Women Country Office of Lebanon. It is co-branded with Gender Working Group as a collaborating partner and Sweden as the funding partner. The GSP provides an overview of gender statistics across thirteen areas related to global normative framework and indicators across the humanitarian, development and peace nexus.

The National Poverty Targeting Programme is the largest regular poverty-targeted social safety net cash assistance programme in Lebanon for the poorest & most marginalized Lebanese families. A gender analysis of the NPTP was undertaken by the Ministry of Social Affairs, the World Food Programme, & UN Women between April & June 2022. The objective of this analysis was to examine how the NPTP has impacted the lives of women, girls & other marginalized people of concern & how the programme can improve its processes to ensure this assistance is safe & accessible to women & girls.

Since 8 October 2023, the spillover effects of the exchange of fire at the Lebanese southern border has led to killing and injuring of civilians in the south of Lebanon and the internal displacement of 58,835 residents from South Lebanon (as of 9 December 2023). To shed light on how women have been affected by the conflict, and their ability to assist in local crisis response, UN Women Lebanon and its partners have worked together to provide this Gender Alert amid the ongoing security and humanitarian crisis in south Lebanon. The findings provide observations on relevant gender equality issues to help UN Women and the humanitarian community pinpoint crucial areas of humanitarian response to incorporate into emergency preparedness and response planning.

This brief synthesizes findings from statistically representative data on women’s economic participation from before the crisis (2018 and 2019) and during the crisis (2022) to develop a more complete picture of the ways in which the crisis has impacted women at work.

Over the last three years, Lebanon has been assailed by compounded crises that have affected the whole population, especially women, girls and marginalized groups. Compounded by the spread of COVID-19, incidents of gender based-violence (GBV) have increased, with women and girls disproportionately affected. The past three years – when compared to the years before – have witnessed more reporting of domestic violence and an increase in the severity and emergency nature of such incidents...