Lebanon

OBJECTIVES

IOM’s Family Assistance Programme (FAP) was launched in March 2016 and is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. The central aim of the programme is to support families in vulnerable situations to reunite with their relatives in Germany.  The programme facilitates access to family reunification, by assisting migrants with the visa application process.

Lebanon is immensely affected due to climate change and labour mobility in the Middle East region. The Syrian conflict resulted in mass influx of around 2 million Syrian refugees into Lebanon, causing huge pressure on the economic and social assets of Lebanon, and provoking severe disruptions in the electricity, agriculture and water systems since March 2011. The conflict inflicted also a heavy blow to the country's agriculture sector. 

The Government of Lebanon holds annual conferences for diaspora focused on investment opportunities and incentives in the country.

At the same time, the government of Lebanon holds conferences abroad targeting the Lebanese diaspora on various topics, to provide and talk about investment opportunities in Lebanon. The most recent one was held in France and focused on Energy.

The World Bank developed the GCFF financing mechanism to support middle-income countries receiving refugees through beneficial loans. Currently, GCFF supports Jordan and Lebanon, which has received a large number of Syrian refugees. The facility has also been expanded to provide support for other middle-income countries receiving refugees (the global window).

Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) directly connects employers in countries with a shortage of local talent to skilled migrants who have been forced to flee their countries.

The 3RP is a country driven, regionally coherent planning process. It draws together the national crisis response plans for humanitarian relief, resilience and stabilization in the five most affected neighbouring countries to Syria, namely, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt, in a coordinated regional framework.

The Mediterranean City-to-City Migration Project (MC2CM) implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in partnership with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and UN Habitat, as well as UNHCR as an associate partner, aims to create a network of 10 European and Southern Mediterranean cities in order to facilitate exchange of experience among and to contribute to improved migration planning and governance in these cities.

In Lebanon, civil society organisations have taken active steps to provide legal assistance and representation in courts and through informal dispute-resolution mechanisms to obtain justice in cases of violations. They have been actively engaged in the provision of legal aid to migrant domestic workers and capacity-building and awareness-rising activities have targeted judges, lawyers and those responsible for implementing the law, the number of legal decisions in favour of migrant domestic workers has multiplied over the last few years.

'Strengthening African and Middle Eastern Diaspora Policy through South-South Exchange' (AMEDIP) is a project of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), developed and implemented within the framework of the Dialogue on Mediterranean Transit Migration (MTM). More specifically, AMEDIP builds directly upon the previous MTM initiative 'Linking Emigrant Communities for More Development - Inventory of Institutional Capacities and Practices', implemented by ICMPD and IOM in the period 2009 - 2010.