Report-Back from LCPS Panel Discussion on Impact of Syrian Conflict on Lebanese Economy

New Article Submission

Thank you for your interest in Jadaliyya. We welcome all submissions. The most significant requirement is for Jadaliyya submissions to be analytically compelling and offer a perspective or argument that has not been covered at length either on Jadaliyya or elsewhere. Because of the volume of submissions, well-written pieces are prioritized. Length is flexible, 1000 to 2500 words is the average range. However, we will accept longer pieces. Once submitted, several members of the editorial committee will review your piece and one of them will inform you of the decision.
Author Details
Article Details
Select Countries
Select Keywords
Select Topics
Only RTF, Word, and Pages documents accepted.

Recommended image size: 762x800 px

Location of each image should be indicated in the text of the article via a square bracket caption that includes: (1) a description of the image; (2) the photographer/designer and source of the image. Please note we only use images you as the author have the right to use, which usually means those of your own creation or those published under Creative Commons. Alternatively, you need specific permission from the copyright holder.
Please read the Release Form and provide an electronic signature [your full name] below to confirm that you accept its terms
Required
Hyperlink words in your article if they refer to links on the internet. We encourage more, rather than less, links (try to avoid footnotes—embed them as hyperlinks if possible)

Article added successfully.

Pages Menu BETA
Jan 11, 2014 Lebanon
Report-Back from LCPS Panel Discussion on Impact of Syrian Conflict on Lebanese Economy

Report-Back from LCPS Panel Discussion on Impact of Syrian Conflict on Lebanese Economy

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following summary was produced by the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS) on a panel discussion held on 6 December 2013 on the impact of the Syrian conflict on the Lebanese economy.] 

The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS), in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), organized a roundtable discussion on the impactof the Syrian conflict on the Lebanese economy on December 6, 2013.  This roundtable was moderated by Dr. Mary Kawar (video). The key points made by the two featured speakers were:

  • Mr. Samir El Daher: In order to combat the economic challenges Lebanon faces, mainly due to the influx of Syrian refugees, the government is setting up a multi-donor trustfund (video)
  • Mr. Kamal Hamdan: This fund must adhere to eight objectives and parameters (see below) so it can deal with rising unemployment, social tension, and other structural problems (video)
     

Mr. Samir El Daher, Advisor to the Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and Development, outlined the challenges that the Lebanese government has faced as a result of the Syrian crisis and the steps it has taken to address them. Lebanon’s concern is no longer just how it can provide humanitarian assistance to the refugees, but how the Lebanese economy can be shielded from the crisis.

The scale and length of the Syrian conflict cannot be predicted. An issue the Lebanese government is struggling with is that while the financial impact of many disasters can be quantified, such as the 2006 war on Lebanon or the Haiti earthquake, the indeterminate nature of the Syrian conflict makes it very hard to assess the extent of the damage.

The wider economy is struggling with depressed investment and consumption levels as well as disrupted trade routes and tourism flows. Based on a recent World Bank study, Lebanon’s growth rates have been slashed from an expected 4.5% to 1.5% (over the period 2012-2014), with the latter being presented as an optimistic figure.  Total GDP for 2012-2014 was expected to be $143 billion, but due to the crisis it is now expected to be $135.5 billion.

The refugee problem is putting major strains on Lebanon’s services and infrastructure. The number of Syrian children requiring school places is well beyond Lebanon’s capabilities to provide. A 25% population increase has also strained the already vulnerable national infrastructure and affected the government’s budget, due to subsidies on basic services such as electricity. Security responsibilities and costs have also increased and solid waste management is increasingly problematic. The estimated costs on the public treasury over the three-year period (2012-14) include

  1. $1.1 billion due to surge in demand for public services.
  2. $2.5 billion required for “stabilization”, that is to provide public services to both Lebanese and Syrians at their pre-conflict quality levels.
  3. $1.5 billion in depressed revenue collection due to fall in GDP.
  4. Total cost of $5.1 billion, further incurring cost by adding to the deficit and increasing public debt.

The huge pressure on the labor market due to the population increase has led to a spike in unemployment as competition for low skilled jobs in particular increases. This promotes underemployment and increased poverty, with 170,000 additional Lebanese citizens expected to fall below the national poverty line by the end of 2014. 

To address these challenges, the Lebanese Government has created a coordination committee that cuts across all sectors to deal with the impact Syria is having on Lebanon. Headed by the Prime Minister, this committee has representatives from all concerned ministries – such as Finance, Health, Education, Social Affairs, Economy - Governor of the BDL, Governor of the CDR and other relevant bodies.

The Lebanese government has decided to set up a multi-donor trust fund managed by the World Bank to coordinate international aid. The creation of thisfund should assuage donor distrust of the Lebanese government’s ability to effectively and transparently manage direct aid. The fund would finance pre-specified projects and would also allow for greater coordination of aid along defined priorities. The government proposes the creation of a directive committee headed by the Prime Minister and with representatives from the World Bank, UN agencies and other donors to oversee the fund. The role of the committee is to coordinate closely with the aforementioned Lebanese Government committee on Syria in order to define its strategy and priorities. While not all donors will choose to operate through the fund, Mr. Daher states it provides an essential avenue for many aid agencies.
 

Mr. Kamal Hamdan, Executive Director of the Consultation and Research Institute, highlighted some of his concerns over the socio-economic challenges Lebanon is facing, which were as follows:

  • In light of the current political vacuum, there is a fear that government procedures are incapable of dealing with the increasing refugee problem.
  • Assessing the economic repercussions of the Syrian crisis on Lebanon is difficult because the length of the conflict is uncertain, and therefore the full extent of the consequences unknown.
  • The average growth over the years 2007-2010 was 8.5% which dropped to 4% in 2011 and then to an estimated 1.5% over 2012-2014. We cannot attribute all the depressed growth to spillovers from the Syrian crisis nor can we tell how much of it is attributed to the Syrian crisis or to other cyclical factors.
  • Mr. Hamdan also voiced concern regarding the accuracy and credibility of the estimated number of refugees in Lebanon as the number itself has become politicized. Does this number include the pre-conflict Syrian immigrant population or only the newcomers? How many informal refugees are there? Accurately estimating this number is very important because the estimated costs of the crisis on the Lebanese economy highly depend on it.

Unemployment is a serious challenge. In just two years, the number of people inhabiting Lebanon increased by 25% due to the influx of Syrian refugees. As a consequence, the labor supply has also experienced an alarming increase in these two years. Since Lebanon already suffered from a high unemployment rate before the influx, the effects of this on the labor market could be especially dire.Before the crisis, the Lebanese economy witnessed around 45,000 to 50,000 new entrants to the labor market annually. In contrast, this is accompanied by a negligible increase in demand for labor from both private and public sectors. Mr. Hamdan argues strongly that the Lebanese economy is witnessing an annual gap of 50% to 60% between the supply and demand for labor. Coupled with a 30% increase in labor supply from Syrian refugees, the potential consequences of such a situation are disastrous.

Social cohesion is in jeopardy. In addition to the labor market problem, difficulties related to social cohesion are emerging, especially in the regions that at first showed the highest levels of compassion for the Syrians. Mr. Hamdan stressed the importance of social cohesion and warned that any threats to it could have as big a destructive influenceas underemployment.

Money is being injected into the economy. Finally, he also mentioned the positive impact of the influx ofrefugees: they are injecting cash into the economy, they are economically active, and their skills are complementary to the Lebanese labor force.

With regards to the trust fund, Mr. Hamdan has no doubt that Lebanon is in dire need of support and he very much welcomes the establishment of the fund, but has some critical comments and suggestions:

  1. The fund must be financed through donations and grants rather than through loans.
  2. The fund should target Lebanese and Syrians alike, especially paying attention to the most disadvantaged groups. Subsequently, the challenge of determining the eligibility criteria arises.
  3. The fund should have an important investment emphasis. The rationale behind the fund should be development instead of stabilization. The goal should not be, as once was the idea, to bring the macro and micro indicators back to their 2010 levels, as even in 2010 the country faced major infrastructural problems. Mr. Hamdan strongly advocates for spending the greater share of the fund on investing, encouraging production and creating employment opportunities. Subsidizing services should accompany these strategies and complement them rather than be the fund’s core aim.
  4. The biggest part of the fund’s money should be assigned to local development projects: more than half of the municipal unions have developed visions and action plans for their development, but they lack financing. The first priority should be to revive these plans especially in the areas witnessing the highest levels of refugees.
  5. Within these development projects, one of the greatest priorities should be to invest in labor-intensive projects to create employment opportunities especially for the more disadvantaged Lebanese and Syrians.
  6. It is essential for the Lebanese government to build good relationships with donor nations and agencies. The proposed directive committee is a good first step to that end, but Mr. Hamdan cautions against past negative experiences in similar situations and stresses the need to learn from these mistakes.
  7. The investment of the fund’s money should be accompanied by a modernization and subsequently implementation of the existing economic visions and social development strategies.
  8. The money should be used in a way to also maintain and stimulate social cohesion as failure of the latter could result in drastic and uncontrollable repercussions.

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 9: Islamophobia, the West, and Genocide with Hatem Bazian

      Long Form Podcast Episode 9: Islamophobia, the West, and Genocide with Hatem Bazian

      Hatem Bazian addresses the historical trajectory of Islamophobia and its significance in understanding geopolitical transformation in the post-Cold War world. As Western ideologues shifted from their focus on the Soviet Union after the Cold War, and increasingly adopted the Clash of Civilizations paradigm to undergird their maintenance of global hegemony, Islam and Muslims replaced communism as the chief bogeyman. Bazian explains how and why this came about, and the centrality Palestine played in its development and operation, both in the West and for Israel. He also addresses US government disciplining of universities and particularly student activists.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      Long Form Podcast Episode 8: Resigning the State Department Over Gaza With Hala Rharrit

      In this episode of Long Form, Hala Rharrit discusses the factors that led her to resign from the US State Department, the mechanisms by which institutional corruption and ideological commitments of officials and representatives ensure US support for Israel, and how US decision-makers consistently violate international law and US laws/legislation. Rharrit also addresses the Trump administration’s claim that South Africa is perpetrating genocide against the country’s Afrikaaner population, and how this intersects with the US-Israeli campaign of retribution against South Africa for hauling Israel before the ICJ on charges of genocide.

    • Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      Emergency Teach-In — Israel’s Profound Existential Crisis: No Morals or Laws Left to Violate!

      The entire globe stands behind Israel as it faces its most intractable existential crisis since it started its slow-motion Genocide in 1948. People of conscience the world over are in tears as Israel has completely run out of morals and laws to violate during its current faster-paced Genocide in Gaza. Israelis, state and society, feel helpless, like sitting ducks, as they search and scramble for an inkling of hope that they might find one more human value to desecrate, but, alas, their efforts remain futile. They have covered their grounds impeccably and now have to face the music. This is an emergency call for immediate global solidarity with Israel’s quest far a lot more annihilation. Please lend a helping limb.
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412