In Lebanon, a refugee can build your house, harvest your crops, and care for your children, but cannot legally be a nurse, a lawyer, or a mechanic.
Lebanon is home to one of the highest per capita refugee populations in the world. Since the 1948 Nakba and again with the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, the country has absorbed waves of forced displacement, hosting over 200,000 Palestinian and more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees.1 Despite decades of residence, these communities remain excluded from basic rights, chief among them, the right to work.
Lebanon has never signed the 1951 Refugee Convention. Refugees are treated not as rights-holders, but as temporary guests. This legal vacuum has allowed successive governments to impose restrictive policies that limit refugees’ ability to access formal employment, social protections, or union representation.
A Legacy of Exclusion: Legalized Precarity
The marginalization of refugees in Lebanon is structural. Following the 1948 Nakba, approximately 100,000 Palestinian refugees fled to Lebanon, where they were framed not as rights-holders but as temporary guests.2 This framing has persisted for over seven decades, shaping a policy landscape that systematically denies refugees access to formal employment, property ownership, and social protections.
Palestinians in Lebanon once worked across sectors, but this changed with the 1964 Ministerial Decree No. 17561, which imposed work permit requirements and a reciprocity condition, unattainable without a recognized Palestinian state. The decree excluded them from over 30 syndicated professions such as law, medicine, and engineering. Reforms in 2005 and 2010 eased some restrictions, allowing access to certain jobs and limited social protections. However, these measures were largely symbolic. Palestinians still face systemic exclusion, as work permits remain rarely issued and access to liberal professions controlled by syndicates remains off-limits.3
Syrian refugees followed a different trajectory. Before 2011, Syrians benefited from bilateral agreements that allowed relatively free movement and informal labor, particularly in agriculture, construction, and domestic work, sectors long reliant on Syrian labor.4 But with the outbreak of the Syrian conflict and the arrival of over 1.5 million refugees, Lebanon’s policy hardened. In 2015, the government requested that UNHCR suspend new refugee registrations and introduced stringent residency and labor regulations. These measures effectively pushed the majority of Syrians into the informal economy, exposing them to exploitation, arrest, and deportation.5
The Human Cost: Coping in the Shadows
The exclusion of refugees from Lebanon’s formal labor market is not only a legal or economic failure, it is a daily humanitarian crisis. Denied the right to work formally, both Palestinian and Syrian refugees are forced into the informal economy, where they face exploitative conditions, irregular wages, and constant threats of arrest or deportation. As of 2022, over 60% of Lebanon’s entire workforce was informally employed, with refugees disproportionately concentrated in this vulnerable segment.6
For Palestinian refugees, some residing in Lebanon for more than 75 years, this exclusion has created entrenched, intergenerational poverty. According to UNRWA, 83% of Palestine refugees in Lebanon now live below the poverty line, with limited access to public services, property ownership, or formal employment.7 Coping mechanisms have grown increasingly fragile: many families depend on remittances, rotate debts within kin networks, or survive on diminishing humanitarian aid. Youth, seeing no future, often resort to informal gig work or risk dangerous irregular migration.8
Syrian refugees face a similarly bleak reality, compounded by Lebanon’s economic collapse since 2019. With inflation surpassing 140% and unemployment rising sharply, over 90% of Syrian refugee households live in extreme poverty.9 Coping strategies include borrowing money, reducing food consumption, pulling children from school, or pushing them into hazardous labor. A 2023 UNHCR assessment found 89% of Syrian refugees reported food shortages, and more than a third resorted to selling assets or skipping meals entirely (VASyR, 2023).
Paradoxically, while excluded from protections, refugees remain essential to Lebanon’s economy. They sustain core sectors like agriculture, construction, and services, roles often avoided by Lebanese workers. Refugee-targeted humanitarian aid has also significantly supported local economic activity (LCPS, 2021). Yet these vital contributions are rarely acknowledged amid growing xenophobia and rising deportations.
Conclusion: From Survival to Dignity
Lebanon’s refugee policy has long been shaped by fear, of permanence, of political imbalance, of integration. But the cost of exclusion has become too high to ignore. Denying refugees, the right to work has entrenched poverty, fueled resentment, and deepened Lebanon’s own economic and social crises. It has also wasted the talents, skills, and aspirations of hundreds of thousands of people who are already contributing, quietly, invisibly, to the country’s survival.
There is a way forward. Pilot initiatives have shown that simplifying work permit procedures, particularly in agriculture and industry, can reduce informality and improve legal compliance.10 Easing syndicate restrictions and expanding access to professions would not only enhance refugee self-reliance but also reduce dependency on humanitarian aid. Just as crucial is the recognition of refugees as workers with rights, not merely as recipients of assistance. Their inclusion in labor unions and collective bargaining frameworks would provide essential protections and foster social cohesion.
At a time when Lebanon is navigating economic collapse, political paralysis, and rising xenophobia, embracing a rights-based approach to refugee labor is not a concession, it is a necessity. Recognizing refugees as economic contributors, not burdens, is both a moral imperative and a pragmatic step toward recovery. The question is no longer whether Lebanon can afford to grant refugees the right to work. It is whether it can afford not to.
Basmeh & Zeitooneh is a refugee-led relief and development organization founded in Lebanon in 2012. Operating community centers across the country, it provides protection, education, livelihoods, peacebuilding, and civil society support to displaced and host communities, with a mission to restore dignity and agency through locally grounded, participatory approaches.
Dr. Claude Samaha is Research Manager at Basmeh & Zeitooneh and a conflict analyst and researcher with expertise in documenting displacement, human rights violations, and migration policy across the Middle East. She collaborates with refugee-led organizations, humanitarian actors, and policy platforms to strengthen inclusive responses and amplify the voices of those who are marginalized.
- UNHCR, 2024: https://www.unhcr.org/lb/about-us/unhcr-lebanon-glance#:~:text=Lebanon%20remains%20a%20country%20hosting,11%2C238%20refugees%20of%20other%20nationalities. ↩︎
- Yassine, 2010: https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/unwelcome-guests-palestinian-refugees-in-lebanon/#:~:text=Lebanese%2DPalestinian%20Relations,Palestinian%20refugees%20living%20in%20Lebanon. ↩︎
- LPDC, 2024: https://lpdc.gov.lb/publications/lpdc-2022-2024-national-strategy-to-address-the-palestinian-file-in-lebanon/ ↩︎
- Fakhoury, 2017: https://laur.lau.edu.lb:8443/xmlui/handle/10725/8280 ↩︎
- UNHCR, 2024: https://www.unhcr.org/where-we-work/countries/lebanon#:~:text=Respond%20to%20emergencies-,Respond%20to%20emergencies,Innovation%20Service; Kikano et al., 2021: https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article/34/1/422/6103158?login=false ↩︎
- ILO, 2025: https://lebanon.un.org/en/292764-ilo-reaffirms-support-lebanon%E2%80%99s-labour-market-recovery-during-meeting-between-regional#:~:text=BEIRUT%2C%2014%20April%202025%20(ILO,stability%20and%20long%2Dterm%20development. ↩︎
- UNRWA, 2023: https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/2023-socioeconomic-survey-report-palestine-refugees-lebanon ↩︎
- RW,2024: https://reliefweb.int/report/lebanon/silent-struggles-mental-health-realities-palestinian-refugee-camps-lebanon-enar ↩︎
- UNHCR, 2024: https://www.unhcr.org/lb/about-us/unhcr-lebanon-glance#:~:text=Lebanon%20remains%20a%20country%20hosting,11%2C238%20refugees%20of%20other%20nationalities. ↩︎
- ILO, 2025: https://lebanon.un.org/en/292764-ilo-reaffirms-support-lebanon%E2%80%99s-labour-market-recovery-during-meeting-between-regional#:~:text=BEIRUT%2C%2014%20April%202025%20(ILO,stability%20and%20long%2Dterm%20development. ↩︎