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Lebanon: Water Sector End of Year Dashboard 2017

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Lebanon
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UNHCR
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The end-of-year dashboard summarizes the progress made by partners involved in the Lebanon Crisis Response and highlights trends affecting people in need. The Water sector in Lebanon is working towards its expected outcome: by 2020, more vulnerable people in Lebanon are accessing suffcient, safe water for drinking and domestic use with reduced health and environmental impacts from unsafe wastewater management.

Key contributions towards LCRP impact(s)

Over 25 organizations have together reached more than 1.3 million people with some form of assistance. Of these, around 645 thousand (47%) are Lebanese, and over 1.1 million benetted from stabilization interventions, mostly focused on water supply infrastructure, expanding, rehabilitating, or introducing water production, storage, distribution, or treatment systems.
Critical humanitarian interventions and continuous servicing of Informal Settlements has reached over 230 thousand people (88% of residents) with activities such as provision of water storage containers and water points, delivery of trucked potable water, installation of latrines, implementation and desludging of wastewater systems, and hygiene promotion. These activities, while essential, have proven largely unsustainable, and continue to hamper the sector’s capacity (particularly nancial) to transition beyond the emergency and into wider stabilization programming. Palestinian refugee camps also beneted from several improvements to water, wastewater, and solid waste infrastructure and management systems, reaching around 250 thousand people. Beneciaries of the Water sector’s response have seen improvements in the form of increased average daily water quantity or improved quality, but the vast majority (64% of all households in Lebanon) still do not access safely managed water (SDG 6.1), as reliability, safety, and availability on premises are persistent shortcomings. A communication strategy has been developed with and for Water Establishments (WE), to be implemented over the coming three years, with the aim of fostering trust, strengthening participation, and improving relations with customers and communities. Programs promoting hygiene awareness, safe practices, and responsible water use have reached around 240 thousand people (74% of target population), and a national Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) study has been completed, establishing a baseline and guiding future interventions.

A feasibility study was conducted to tackle cost-effective water supply to Informal Settlements through national systems. Coupled with hydrogeological studies completed in 2016, the sector aims to develop evidence-based approaches to transitioning Informal Settlements out of emergency water and wastewater service modalities while avoiding adverse impact on the environment and quality of services to the host community. The Ministry of Energy and Water has established a Water Executive Committee (WEC) to provide a platform for strategic guidance, assessment, planning and review of investments in programmes and projects in the water sector in Lebanon to ensure achievement of national objectives related to LCRP, which has already expanded enabling environment for humanitarian to stabilization transition by approving cost-effective national solutions in Informal Settlements, subject to the do-no-harm principle and maintaining social stability.

The Water sector contributes to (1) protection of vulnerable populations through tailored WASH services for persons with special needs, (2) immediate assistance to vulnerable populations through humanitarian WASH activities during evictions, inuxes and other emergencies of displaced persons from Syria, as well as mitigating WASH-related disease outbreaks, and ensuring immediate and temporary service delivery in Informal Settlements and Palestinian camps and gatherings, (3) supporting service provision through national improvements to water and wastewater systems that are primarily managed by the Water Establishments, while also supporting MoEW planning and implementation, monitoring and management processes, and (3) reinforcing Lebanon’s economic, social and environmental stability through projects that: (a) support livelihoods by generating construction related jobs for displaced Syrians as well as the host community; (b) increase service levels for all in underserved communities where conict has ared over scarce resources; and (c) mitigating negative environmental consequences through improvements to management of wastewater, protection of water sources, and treatment of water supply