Aller au contenu principal

Leaving no one behind: Evidence from Lebanon on how multi-purpose cash beneficiaries with different vulnerability profiles spend income and access services

Pays
Liban
+ 1
Sources
NRC
+ 2
Date de publication

BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE

Since 2017, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been assisting Syrian refugee households living in extreme poverty in Lebanon by providing unrestrict-ed multi-purpose cash (MPC) transfers to help cover basic household needs. The aim of the MPC pro-gramme is to stabilize the situation of households, improve the food security of families, and to contrib-ute to other well-being outcomes, including increas-ing access to primary healthcare, children’s school attendance, and mental well-being. As of October 2021, WFP assisted 64,589 Syrian refugee house-holds with monthly unrestricted multi-purpose cash assistance.

Since 2019, Lebanon has experienced political in-stability and a rapidly unfolding economic crisis. The financial and banking crisis has resulted in a collapse of the economy, and currency depreciation plus subsidy removals were followed by the long-lasting economic effects of the 4 August 2020 Beirut ex-plosion, as well as the devastating consequences of Covid-19. The devaluation of the Lebanese pound (LBP), losing more than 90% of its value since Octo-ber 2019, has led to high inflation and price increas-es, with food prices rising 400% between January and December 2020.' The result is increasing levels of poverty and vulnerability across the country, both within host and refugee communities.” In 2021, 88% of Syrian refugee households were living under ex-treme poverty, in comparison to 55% in 2019.3 As a result, households’ capacity to afford food, shelter and healthcare has been increasingly eroded.‘ Daily experiences are shaped by high inflation rates for food, fuel, services and basic commodities, alongside diminishing livelihood opportunities. This crisis is impacting the lives of all Lebanon residents, but is especially challenging for the most vulnerable refugee households. Importantly, food insecurity in Lebanon is anticipated to continue to rise as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. Cereals are a staple food in Lebanon, and the country is highly dependent on wheat imports from both Ukraine and Russia. Wheat prices have already risen sharply—before the start of the Ukraine conflict on 14 February, the Survival Min-imum Expenditure Basket (SMEB) cost was 560,000 LBP and merely a month later the cost of the food basket had risen to 634,000 LBP.”

The Cash Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Organizational Network (CAMEALEON) is an NGO-led consortium providing monitoring, eval-uation, accountability, and learning (MEAL) support to the World Food Programme’s (WFP) multi-pur-pose cash programme. In Lebanon, there is a grow-ing body of studies that has looked at the general impact of multi-purpose cash (MPC) on targeted refugee populations. However, there is a gap in ev-idence and understanding of how MPC-recipient households with specific vulnerabilities meet their basic needs. Importantly, the MPC assistance does not cover the full recommended Survival Minimum Expenditure Basket (SMEB)-the calculated amount of funds that ensures a household's minimum surviv-al needs are met.° Therefore, the context is especially challenging for households with certain vulnerabili-ties—such as households with no working-age male adults, and/or households with vulnerabilities that impact the ability of household members to work or result in additional spending needs.

This study aims to generate a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of the impact of MPC assis-tance on Syrian refugee households with different vulnerability profiles, and explores how comple-mentary interventions can support severely vulner-able households to meet their basic needs and aa-dress issues beyond the reach of cash.’ Generating evidence on this topic will support WFP, donors, and other cash actors in monitoring the adequacy of the transfer value of MPC in relation to the Survival Min-imum Expenditure Basket (SMEB)® for specific vul-nerable groups, future refinements of the Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM)’, and considerations on which complementary services need to be prior-itized to create a safety net for refugees.