Identifying knowledge gaps in the Lebanon response

During 2022, the Inter-Agency Coordination team in Lebanon has worked with coordinators and partners in all sectors of the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP), to identify evidence and knowledge gaps in the current context.

While Lebanon generally is a data and information rich response, important knowledge gaps still exist which prevent humanitarian and development interventions from achieving their intended results. In a resources-constraint environment, it is crucial that efforts are coordinated and prioritized, and directed towards those areas where they can be most impactful.

In that spirit, more than 49 research questions have been collected, at inter-sectoral, cross-sectoral and sectoral levels. The questions are of mixed nature, some focusing on strategy or on the verification of specific assumptions, while others aim to evaluate impact. Some could possibly be answered by sharing existing knowledge among partners and/or experts, while others would require an in-depth study or evaluation. The Protection Information Management (PIM)¹ process has been applied to each question, when completing the information landscape assessment, specifying the rationale, priority level, and programmatic implications.

Please click here to
download the list with
research questions.

Please click here to
download the research
factsheet.

Outreach for contributions

The Inter-Agency Coordination team is reaching out to all partners and academic institutions for their assistance in addressing the identified knowledge gaps and in contributing to answering these LCRP research questions. The team is also calling on research institutions to explore research opportunities or internships, and on donors to consider channelling funding to carry out required research addressing these prioritized knowledge gaps.

The full list of research questions and knowledge gaps may be accessed on the Lebanon Information Hub. This will be regularly updated, to reflect progress made and highlight new gaps and research needs as they emerge.

Available data sources

In order to ensure that the use of existing data is maximized, the Inter-Agency Coordination team continues to work on making as many data sources as possible available to all online. Data may be accessed through, among others, the following options:

Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2022-23
containing situational analyses and operational response plans for each sector

Data portal Syria operation - Lebanon
containing operational data from all partners working in Lebanon

Lebanon Information Hub
containing essential links and sector-specific access to information

VASyR Hub
containing raw data tables from the (2021) Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

Assessment Registry
containing an online and searchable repository of ongoing and past assessments in Lebanon, including description of methodology, key findings and link to report when finalized

SpongeBase
containing response information extracted from ActivityInfo, linked to geographical data points and downloadable

FactBook
containing quick facts and figures about the crisis response in Lebanon

DataHub
containing a possibility to request access to additional available datasets

Contact

If you are interested in pursuing research or in contributing to filling some of the current knowledge gaps, please contact the relevant Sector coordinator, or the Inter-Agency Coordination team at lebbeia@unhcr.org, who would be able to provide further background information as well as possible data sources or methods that could contribute to responding to the research questions.

¹ The objective of PIM is to provide quality data and information on displacement situations in a safe, reliable and meaningful way, in order to ensure the efficient and targeted use of resources and to enable the coordination, design and delivery of protection responses.