The explosion that rocked the Port of Beirut on 4 August 2020 has the potential of being a critical tipping point for the whole of Lebanon. It has served to uncover the current fragile equilibria that have masked structural fractures, some with deep roots in the past. It may also usher new ways of thinking about how to support the people of Lebanon recover; perhaps helping all stakeholders to look at the huge task at hand through a future-focused and a people-centered lens bringing fresh ideas and casting new lights on old ones to build Lebanon forward.
After a decade of hardship brought about by the spillover effects of the conflict in Syria, this explosion came in the middle of other crises: a dwindling economy fast approaching collapse, triggering unprecedented protests demanding accountability, transparency and inclusion, and an outbreak of an unprecedented global pandemic that is not abating. These crises have hit human development in Lebanon very hard, and together they have tested the coping capacities of the Lebanese people beyond their limits.
Globally, the direct impacts of COVID-19 on health, combined with the impact of measure that were necessary to contain its outbreak on education and economic activity have caused human development to decline this year for the first time since UNDP introduced its human development Index in 1990.1
In Lebanon, like the rest of the world, the COVID crisis revealed structural fragilities in health systems and systemic unpreparedness of governance arrangements necessary to deal with such a major crisis. More importantly it exposed and exacerbated prevailing vulnerabilities and inequalities. The crisis affected everyone, but not in the same way, nor to an equal extent. The most vulnerable were hardest hit—impoverished communities, refugees, migrant workers and groups subjected to systemic inequality like women and girls. Inequalities can also exacerbate intercommunal tensions and threaten social stability. The exact same can be said about impacts of the economic crisis and most recently the Port Explosion.
Crises also reinforce an almost primal propensity for solidarity. In all the recent crises in Lebanon, we have witnessed community mobilization against inequalities with people questioning the taken-for-granted distribution of wealth, services, and social protection networks, and calling for change based on equality, solidarity and sustainability.
Taking the Port Explosion as a point of departure, articles in this edition of the supplement come in that vein—examining the impacts of the manifold, mutually compounding crises in Lebanon. They invite us to rethink past legacies and to think afresh of new potentials and modalities. Whether it is leveraging experiences from past crises; how the international community must transform its support; new roles for the very important Lebanese diaspora; an empathetic understanding of refugee perspectives; or new approaches to addressing core issues like belonging, preserving the living urban heritage or disaster risk management, the set of articles here prompt us to future-think, beyond the “business as usual,” as we consider how to bring everyone together to contribute to building forward Lebanon.