Introduction:
Lebanon’s overlapping crises have rapidly eroded households’ abilities to meet basic needs and absorb shocks. Successive wars between Israel and Hezbollah in 2024 and 2026 displaced more than 1 million people each, damaged homes and livelihoods, and deepened an already severe poverty and food security crisis. Lebanon’s limited formal social protection regime forces many households to rely on family, friends, neighbors, community actors, and diaspora connections to meet their immediate needs and cope with displacement.
Communities are often their own first responders during crises, and informal support drawn from a household’s own network is more readily accessible than state or aid actor assistance. Informal support includes tangible transfers such as cash, credit, and food, as well as intangible forms of assistance including market information, physical assistance, and emotional support that conventional vulnerability assessments often overlook. However, informal networks often have limited capacity to absorb repeated shocks, especially when an entire community is affected at once. They may support survival in the immediate term but cannot supplant state-administered social protection or humanitarian assistance.
Focusing on households affected by conflict and displacement in Lebanon, this report examines what assistance informal social protection (ISP) networks provide, how dependable the networks are, and whether households receiving ISP can support others in return. Drawing on post-distribution monitoring (PDM) data collected by Mercy Corps’ Cash for Lebanon’s Emergencies and Recovery (CLEAR) program, the report applies an ISP framework structured around six dimensions: network size, resources, diversity, reliability, reciprocity, and dynamics.
By Crisis Analytics Team, Mercy Corps Lebanon
