Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the humanitarian situation in Lebanon.

Lebanon hosts proportionally more refugees than any other country. 1.03 million Syrian refugees are officially registered with the United Nations Refugee Agency in Lebanon with up to 500,000 more unregistered, according to the joint Government of Lebanon-UN Lebanon Crisis Response Plan. In addition, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates that between 260,000 and 280,000 of the 450,000 registered Palestinian refugees from Lebanon continue to depend on UNRWA’s work and that approximately 30,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria now live in Lebanon.

The humanitarian situation in Lebanon is deteriorating. Preliminary results of the United Nation’s 2016 vulnerability assessment survey show that 70.5% Syrian refugees live below the poverty line and 93% are food insecure. In 2015, debt levels were high at an average of $857 per household and across the country Syrian refugees reside in substandard accommodation with poor access to basic services. A 2015 survey by UNRWA and the American University of Beirut found that 90% of Palestinian refugees from Syria, and 65% of Palestinian refugees who lived in Lebanon before the Syrian war, lived below the poverty line.

Since 2012, the Department for International Development has allocated £340 million in humanitarian and development funding in Lebanon to support Syrian refugees, Palestinian refugees and vulnerable Lebanese.