Lebanon emergency
Since October 2023, devastating attacks have killed around 1,600 people, including 104 children, and more than 9,000 injured.
Over one million people in Lebanon are now in urgent need of humanitarian assistance as the crisis continues to escalate.
Protection
including legal aid, psychosocial support and child protection.
Cash assistance
so people can buy food, warm blankets and medicines.
Shelter
to protect families in makeshift informal settlements.
What is the situation in Lebanon?
Lebanon hosts more refugees per capita than any other country in the world. The majority have fled from Syria, but since the beginning of the war in Gaza, ongoing clashes across Lebanon’s southern border have displaced thousands of people.
The country still hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic or the Beirut bomb blasts of 2020. It’s now in the midst of a severe socio-economic crisis, with prices spiralling and many people unable to afford food, electricity or vital medicines.
As a result, nine out of ten refugees in Lebanon are living in extreme poverty – going hungry, sleeping in tents or under flimsy tarpaulins, and ill-equipped to protect themselves from the biting cold and rainstorms of winter. They urgently need help to survive.
What's happening in Lebanon now?
More than 100,000 people have been forced from their homes by Israeli attacks, adding to the more than 200,000 already displaced within Lebanon since October 2023. Further, the latest hostilities have killed more than 600 people and injured more than 1,700, according to Lebanese authorities. Around 69,000 people, both Lebanese and Syrians, are estimated to have crossed into Syria since the escalation of hostilities.
UNHCR is calling the protection of civilians, and is coordinating closely with the authorities and humanitarian partners to provide aid to the most vulnerable people. These recent events mark the most intense attack on Lebanon since 2006. UNHCR is gravely concerned about the serious escalation in the attacks since September 2024 and is urgently calling on all parties involved to end hostilities and protect civilians.
What is Lebanon’s role as a refugee hosting country?
Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees per capita in the world, with an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees and over 11,000 refugees of other nationalities. Of these, 55% are Iraqi, 19% are Sudanese and 13% are Ethiopian.
What support does UNHCR deliver?
UNHCR teams are hard at work across Lebanon in the following ways:
- Supporting community groups and outreach volunteers, who shape programmes at a grassroots level.
- Delivering cash and in-kind assistance, so that families have enough to eat and the essentials they need to survive.
- Providing emergency shelter kits, repairing damaged buildings and improving living conditions in informal settlements.
- Subsidising hospital care and providing better access to vital medicines.
- Teaching basic literacy and numeracy skills to refugee children and helping older students to access higher education opportunities.
- Protecting and providing legal aid to the most vulnerable refugees, including women, children and survivors of gender-based violence.
- Facilitating activities that promote peacebuilding and social stability.
How is UNHCR responding to the latest crises?
UNHCR has operated in Lebanon for many years and is committed to staying and delivering for as long as needed. Its teams continue to work with partner organisations across Lebanon to coordinate the humanitarian response and meet the needs of refugees and conflict-affected people across the country.
There are contingency plans in place in case of a further escalation of violence, so that teams are ready to scale up programmes rapidly if needed.
Where can I find out more about UNHCR’s work in Lebanon?
For the latest updates on this and other crises that UK for UNHCR supports, follow our social media channels and sign up to our email updates.
For the latest UNHCR data relating to Syrian refugees and Lebanon, please visit the UNHCR Operational Data site here.