This document presents the report of number of research initiatives, carried out by Mercy Corps, which have tested the underlying hypotheses which orient social cohesion and stability programming in Lebanon. These assessments assume increased tensions over access to social and municipal services lead to violence; however, they rarely try to understand in more detail how tensions correlate with disputes and violence, or try to understand whether access to different types of services or opportunities has any impact an individual’s propensity to use violence. In order to understand this dynamic in more detail, Mercy Corps carried out a survey of 2,437 households in eight municipalities in North of Lebanon. This survey sought to identify when physical violence occurs – understanding that not all tensions manifest as disputes,1 and not all disputes escalate into violence – in order to better test the assumption that increased tensions over social service provision will lead to violence. As a result of this survey, Mercy Corps recommends that social cohesion programmes should deploy a mixture of social services, livelihoods, and social interactions, rather than maintaining the status quo of overwhelming (in terms of allocation of programmatic resources) focus on social service provision. In particular, Mercy Corps recommends increasing investment in employment as the most effective way to promote stability in Lebanon, in communities with high numbers of refugees. The data shows that Lebanese households with no or limited livelihood options and those with poor economic outlooks for the future correlate with being more prone to use violence, while there was no such correlation between social service access and violence.

CAWTAR | 2017-12-22 12:14:10

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Mercy Corp

​Gender based violence// Sexual violence // Human Rights // Women's Rights // Physical violence//Political violence//Economic violence//Refugees//Verbal violence//​