Forced displacement and refugee protection

Law No. 11 regulates political asylum by allowing all individuals except for those who committed war crimes, human rights violations or non-political crimes to apply for political asylum, granting applicants three months of temporary residency until a final decision on their claim is reached, and then granting asylum to individuals and their family members along with the right to apply for travel documents, right to work, and the right to access government health care, education and housing.

Articles 4 and 7 of Law No. (11) of 2018 on Regulating Political Asylum stipulate that the Minister of Interior establish a Committee for Political Asylee Affairs with members from the Interior, Foreign Affairs and Justice Ministries, the State Security Bureau and the National Human Rights Committee, and defines its modus operandi. The Committee will be responsible for presenting recommendations on political asylum applications to the Minister of Interior who will issue, within three months from the date of receiving the recommendations, a decision approving or rejecting a political asylum application. To date, the Committee has not been established.

Decree 409/PR/MI is part of a set of refugee laws passed in 2017 that streamlines the procedures to determine refugee status to help facilitate refugees' access to health care, education and employment.

Decree 410/PR/MI is the second of a set of refugee laws passed in 2017 and determines the fundamental rights of refugee and asylum seekers, facilitating refugees' access to health care, education and employment, and giving them more opportunities for integration.

Law No. 159 on the status of refugees reinforces the national legal framework on asylum and refugee status while also incorporating many important provisions from the 1951 Refugee Convention and its Protocol to ensure that nationals and refugees enjoy equal civil, economic, social and cultural rights.

The 2017-2020 crisis response plan covers various sectors and aims to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to the most vulnerable displaced people and poor Lebanese, to reinforce Lebanon’s economic, social, environmental and institutional capacity, and to strengthen national and local service delivery and therefore expand access to and improve the quality of basic public services.

As Lebanon's Response Plan was to be carried out in two phases, this Year Two document covers 2016, the second year of the LCRP, as a transitional phase into a longer term strategic framework for 2017-2020.

This updated 2017-2018 response plan builds upon on the 2016-2018 plan and integrates refugee and resilience responses into one comprehensive vulnerability assessment with a single plan for each sector.

Officially launched by the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee in July 2017, the document provides a framework of action to deal with the social and economic situation of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon such as recommendations for the Government to limit unnecessary restrictions on granting Palestinian refugees their economic and social rights.