Long Term Arrangement for Third Party Monitoring-LRPS-2019-9152959

Background

With the crisis already in its ninth year, the Syria conflict has proven to be both a humanitarian and a human rights crisis. Building gradually, but characterized by a marked acceleration of displacement and deprivation, the scale of the crisis both inside Syria and in neighboring countries has overwhelmed the capacities of governments, donors, humanitarian actors and host communities, threatening to push them to the breaking point.

Today, Lebanon is hosting one of the largest number of Syrians of any affected neighboring country. As of July 2019, 926,717Syrian refugees had been registered by UNHCR. In a country where the estimated regular population is 4.2 million, such a caseload represents almost one in four of the total population of Lebanon. However, there also exists an unknown estimate of Syrians not registered, either because they do not want or need to be, or because they have abandoned the process due to difficulties or delays, or simply because they are unaware of the options. In addition, an estimated 400,000 Syrian migrant workers and their relatives live in Lebanon. Lastly, returning Lebanese and Palestinians fleeing the conflict number in the tens of thousands. Taken together with poor or marginalized Lebanese households, it is estimated that the total vulnerable Lebanese population is likely upward of 1.5 million. While this in itself presents a daunting challenge, responding to vulnerable populations’ needs is made even more complex by the geographic scope of the crisis and the indirect impact on local households as Syrian refugees are housed within host communities in almost every municipality.

A massive effort was made to scale up UNICEF’s operational and programmatic support. The pre-emergency profile of small upstream-focused Lebanon country office was radically changed to meet the needs of large scale emergency-oriented programmes; with the necessary increase in the volume of country office staff. This scale up facilitated cooperation and support in entirely new areas of programming and the opening of new field offices to support children located in hard to reach areas.

Given the magnitude of in-country needs, it is essential that agencies providing emergency response in Lebanon have access to timely and accurate information on the situation of refugees and other communities impacted by the crisis. Such information is critical for continuously assessing the needs of the affected populations; and regular monitoring of the effectiveness of the support provided by UNICEF and partners to respond to such needs. UNICEF and supporting agencies are seeking a specialist organization to provide, manage a team of field operators who will provide regular, detailed analysis of the implementation work and feedback from various affected populations across Lebanon in order to inform decisions on targeted humanitarian response.