Targeting peripheral towns and villages

Peripheral regions in Lebanon have long suffered from chronic poverty and a marginalisation that was aggravated by successive wars, especially in some areas. Increased deprivation had adverse impact primarily on education and health, thus contributing to the socio-economic exclusion of these populations and regions.

A comprehensive social plan involving all sectors -public, private and civil society - should necessarily include medium to long term human development programs to sustain various interventions in the regions and address crucial issues such as poverty alleviation, regional disparities, equal opportunities and employment, as well as income-generating activities, in order to improve development indicators and achieve balanced development.

A comprehensive social plan requires creating safety nets at all levels. This would be achieved by assessing the needs of local communities and identifying their priorities, which remains a first step towards an efficient and concrete social reform. These needs, as well as a close cooperation with civil society organisations, can help establish a clear strategy and design a plan of action with the various social actors. Safety nets for remote regions and for the deprived are to be considered as one of the mechanisms put in place to fulfil the social plan’s objectives. Safety nets imply a distribution of roles and responsibilities, an exchange of information, complementarity and solidarity among the concerned parties, as well as the set up of a network of civil society associations which cooperate closely together.

Safety nets could range from basic assistance to vulnerable and disadvantaged social groups to medium and long term initiatives generating jobs which ensure self sufficiency and achieve durable development in peripheral regions. In some Lebanese regions, any kind of assistance should be built on developing and consolidating the ability of communities to interact with the aid provided to their area. The long standing approach of considering direct beneficiaries as a passive group has proven to be inefficient and generated adverse effects in the long run, leading to a dependency attitude, to continuous expectation of outside help, and to an indefinite welfare mentality and status. Targeted populations should be directly involved in the various stages of the activities deployed in their region and must eventually be able to reclaim the ownership of these projects in order to ensure their subsistence.

Consequently, it is crucial to consider services ranging from basic needs to more interactive activities encouraging initiatives and job creation as urgent assistance to deprived communities. To facilitate the social and economic reintegration process in war affected areas, emergency aid should include rehabilitation projects involving community capacity-building and human resources development once the first phase of immediate relief is completed, thus contributing to combating poverty and exclusion, alleviating trauma and rebuilding competence and self confidence.

According to the official document elaborated by the Lebanese government for the Paris III conference entitled “International Conference for Support to Lebanon”, “available statistics show that peripheral regions suffer from high rates of extreme poverty (reaching 11% in North and South Lebanon, compared to 1% in Beirut and some regions of Mount Lebanon). Data also reveals that densely populated areas, such as the Northern and Southern suburbs of Beirut, Tripoli, Saida and Baalbeck, have the largest concentrations of the poor.”

Building skills, transferring knowledge, sharing information through IT dissemination, e-literacy and empowerment constitute basic elements in any social program envisaged as a main tool to reducing disparities and bridging social, cultural and economic gaps in the regions, as IT nowadays represents an inevitable and widely recognised development indicator.