The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) hosted Kanj Hamade, Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at the Lebanese University, and Martha Chen, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Founder, Emeritus International Coordinator and Senior Advisor of the global network “Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing”, in a webinar titled “Lebanon’s Critical Economic Crisis: The Impact on Refugees from Syria and Host Community Members working in the Informal Economy” on Wednesday, September 30, 2020. Nasser Yassin, Director of Research at IFI and co-chair of the AUB4Refugees Initiative conversed with the speakers and moderated the discussion.
This webinar was the culmination of a two-year project funded by Ford Foundation titled “Informal adaptive mechanisms among refugees in the Middle East: Understanding adaptation, resilience, and agency in securing livelihoods in the informal economy among refugees from Syria in Lebanon and Jordan”. The project aimed to understand how refugees from Syria who work in the informal economy are adapting their livelihoods to the experience of protracted displacement. Through five case studies conducted in Lebanon and Jordan, this multidisciplinary research particularly looked at informal mechanisms as tangible manifestations of the refugees’ ability for adaptation and resilience. This webinar delved into this topic further, exploring the impact of Lebanon’s triple crisis on refugees and vulnerable host communities and their livelihoods in the informal economy.
This summary was wirtten by Simon Donat, Intern at the Refugee Research Policy Program at IFI