Promoting Social Stability
The key to effective stabilisation responses is credible data. Over the past year, ARK has conducted, on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme and the Social Stability Working Group of the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan, four quarterly nationally representative perception surveys on social tensions throughout Lebanon, each with 5,000 respondents. The surveys were designed to monitor changes in perceptions of social stability and tensions between host communities and refugees.
An intervention framework had hypothesised that tensions and conflict events decrease as several social stability assistance interventions increase. These interventions were defined as: improving access to services, increasing the quality and quantity of relations, and improving the capability of local actors. Our inception report provides further insights on the survey methodology. The first wave report quantitatively validated the intervention framework, the second wave report explored differences over time and governorate, and the third wave report examined the relationships between attitudes on social stability, humanitarian assistance, and conflict events. The fourth wave report will study the impact of cash assistance on host and refugee relations and tensions.
The survey findings were used to highlight the work of the Crisis Response in 2017, as well as the planning, design and delivery of the 2018 Crisis Response. An easy to use interactive dashboard that allows users to explore the data can be found here.
We have been working in Lebanon for the past decade and are delighted to partner with the UN family, the Government of Lebanon and refugee communities to promote social stability, opportunity and positive developmental outcomes for all those residing in Lebanon.
Alistair Harris, CEO of ARK
