Assessment on the minorities in Lebanon

The International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), a member of ACT Alliance has been operating in Lebanon since 2001, implementing development and humanitarian projects covering the following sectors: Education, Health, WASH, Food Security and Livelihoods at the national level.

Minorities started to take refuge in Lebanon since 2003. With continuing unstable political situation and armed conflicts, which peaked after the Syrian Crisis. The Minorities’ flight intensified, and Lebanon hosted more than ever minority families, from different origins. Mainly Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac and Yazidis ethnic minorities, as well as others ethnicities in smaller numbers.

Objective of the Assessment:

The overall objective of the assessment is to better understand the context of the minority refugees in Lebanon, to identify the needs, the coping mechanism and the support system of the minorities’ households. The assessment should assess as well the gaps in the support and assistance provided by governmental agencies (mainly MoSA as the lead ministry for LCRP), UN agencies and non-governmental organizations.

The research should be able to conclude the minorities coping mechanism and resilience to all the hardships they faced during their flee and currently in Lebanon.

The research should tackle the following subjects/indicators:

• Access to the job market
• Access to employment, source of income, living conditions, etc, ..
• Access to education
• Access to healthcare
• Access to legal services, highlighting any difference between registered and non-registered refugees.
• The cultural participation (religion participation, language, ceremonies…), and their ability to preserve their social and cultural values
• Identifying psychosocial needs
• Identifying households support system
• Social cohesion and integration within the Lebanese community
• Number of persons with disabilities, female head of HH, elderly
• Protection cases before the crisis and after settling in Lebanon; GBV, SGBV, early marriage, divorce, domestic violence…
• Shifting gender roles within households

Data collection methodology

Phase 1: Desk Review:

The first phase of this study entails gathering, reading and assessing available resources and data necessary for the development of a situational analysis; and the design of the technical tools related to the fieldwork.  

The focus will be on the following:

• Already existing data from previous IOCC assessments on education, healthcare, PSS…
• Demographics data: number of refugees per targeted village/ municipality, number of hosting community members, demographics breakdown of hosting and refugee communities.
• Identifying key community leaders for both refugee and hosting communities, head of municipalities, Mokhtars and Church leaders
• National and International NGOs working with minorities

Phase 2: In-depth Assessment/FIELDWORK

Key Informant interviews and

• Key Informant Interview for the following in the targeted villages/towns/neighborhoods:

• Key Hosting community leader
• Key refugee community leader
• Head of municipality or Mokhtar
• Religious leaders
• Director of Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldean schools/community centres, PHCs)

• Focus group discussion in the targeted villages/towns/neighborhoods:

• Refugee community males (children and adults)
• Refugee community females (children and adults)

• Closed questionnaire in the targeted villages/towns/neighborhoods

• Hosting community
• Refugee community

• Sampling methodology for the closed questionnaire:

The statistical unit: resident households.

Sample size and sample distribution: confidence level of 95% and confidence interval of 10.

The geographic distribution of the sample will be performed once the villages are selected.

Phase 3: Analysis and Writing up

• Data entry
• Data cleaning
• Analysis of the collected data and the preparation of the final deliverables.

Deliverables:

• Submission of tools: one week from assignment start date.
• Midterm report: Progress to date, outline of final report, list of actors interviewed and list of actors to be interviewed by the end, all templates to be used.
• Final report: that responds to the assessment's objectives and analyzes critically the data collected.