More than one million people have been displaced across Lebanon since Israel’s latest escalation began on March 2. In a matter of days, sweeping, unlawful displacement orders were given for the entirety of southern Lebanon, parts of the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs known as the Dahiyeh—areas that together account for roughly 14 percent of Lebanese territory.
Lebanon has struggled to absorb the shock. Of the total displaced population, only some 136,000 people have found government-organized shelter across approximately 663 collective shelters, most of them schools already beyond human capacity. The majority have been left to rely on informal arrangements, host communities, or their own limited resources.
The humanitarian catastrophe currently unfolding in Lebanon is both a crisis of scale and of accountability. It reflects the convergence of Israel’s deliberate displacement policies, Lebanon’s governance failures, and a retreating international response—dynamics that predate the current escalation.
A deliberate Israeli displacement policy
The ongoing displacement crisis is not only humanitarian in nature but has profound legal and political implications. Since March 2, Israel has imposed mass evacuation orders covering southern Lebanon without providing guarantees of safe passage and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes almost overnight. In both scope and execution, these orders amount to forced displacement and constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.
To compound the difficult conditions in which people are forced to flee, Israeli strikes targeted all major bridges connecting towns and villages south of the Litani River to the rest of Lebanon, thereby isolating entire districts and cutting off humanitarian access to 150,000 civilians who remained in their homes.
Statements by senior Israeli officials made since March 2 point to territorial rather than security objectives. Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that displaced Shia residents would not be permitted to return south of the Litani until Israeli security conditions are met, and that “all homes in villages near the border… would be destroyed.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was even more explicit, declaring the Litani “the new Israeli border.” This was followed by an order from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand Israel’s ground invasion into southern Lebanon. Taken together, these positions suggest a territorial logic underpinning the campaign.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun has acknowledged that Israel’s actions “solidify the reality of the occupation” and its “expansion within Lebanese territory.” For his part, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s response has focused on constraining Hezbollah military role. This emphasis, however, ignores the more than 15,400 Israeli ceasefire violations in the year following the November 2024 ceasefire with Hezbollah.
It is within this context of unaddressed, systematic violations that the more than one million displaced people find themselves, with the government lacking the political standing and power to demand that humanitarian access reach the south or accountability for the displacement itself. Current state actions, including the withdrawal of the Lebanese army from several villages along the border and across Lebanon’s south, also call into question its commitment to ensuring the right to return, which is recognized under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and affirmed under international humanitarian law. Without guarantees that Lebanon will regain control of these territories, those who stayed are left with no protection, and those who fled have no clear pathway back home.
Lebanon’s protection gap
Lebanon’s response is constrained not only by the scale of displacement but by longstanding structural deficiencies. The country lacks a legal framework for internally displaced persons and any shelter infrastructure; such a framework would ensure the rights of the displaced, establish formal entitlements to shelter, assistance, and protection, and hold the state accountable for its response. The Disaster Risk Management (DRM) Unit, responsible for coordinating emergency responses, relies heavily on external funding and lacks the legal authority and resources required for a crisis of this scale.
These limitations are compounded by Lebanon’s ongoing economic crisis, particularly the 2019 economic and financial collapse, which severely eroded state capacity. The country has also not recovered from the 2024 escalation with Israel, which caused an estimated $6.8 billion in physical damage. Even before the current escalation, officials warned that maintaining the shelters and providing support to the displaced would require $250 million per month—figures far beyond the state’s means.
As in 2024, shelters filled up quickly. Of the 399 facilities opened by Lebanese authorities within the first three days of the March escalation, 357 were at full capacity by March 6. The Salam government has responded within its limited capacity—opening schools and other public buildings—but the burden of securing shelter has largely shifted onto the displaced themselves.
Lebanon, in practice, has long relied on a hybrid protection system: civil society, UN agencies, informal networks, grassroots and community-level initiatives, and non-state actors providing social welfare and protection. Hezbollah has historically played this role in the south, the Dahiyeh, and Bekaa Valley. In the current crisis, civil society and grassroots organizations have once again had to step in to support the displaced, particularly those stuck in the south, where both the state and humanitarian organizations are struggling to reach them.
Among the displaced are Syrian, Palestinian, and refugees of other nationalities, and migrant workers, the majority of whom have been left out of the national crisis response. Though not official policy, school shelters have been restricted to Lebanese nationals—reports indicate that refugees and migrants have been turned away on the grounds of their nationality. Few displaced migrants have been able to secure shelter in churches across the country, while displaced Palestinians are receiving limited aid through the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Overall, foreign refugees and migrants remain “acutely vulnerable” to the impact of the war. This reflects a broader pattern of segmented protection, in which access to assistance is determined by nationality and legal status rather than by vulnerability.
Even for citizens, however, Lebanese security forces have implemented security screenings for the displaced at shelter centers and along displacement routes, a practice that places further pressure on a population already navigating an inadequate protection system. These practices come amid rising social tensions between displaced and host communities, driven by host community fatigue, anti-displacement rhetoric, and localized clashes that risk deepening social and sectarian divisions in Lebanese society.
A retreating international response
Lebanon’s protection gap has long been mitigated by international humanitarian funding. As recently as the 2024 war, funding from external donors helped fill critical gaps in the state’s humanitarian response mechanisms. But that funding has been in significant decline over the past couple of years—most notably that of USAID. At the same time, Gulf states, historically important sources of bilateral aid, are now themselves managing the economic and security pressures of the ongoing U.S.-Iran war. Though they continue to provide Lebanon with humanitarian assistance, this is at a scale that cannot compensate for the withdrawal of Western funding. As of March 28, 2026, only 29 percent of Lebanon’s Emergency Flash Appeal had been funded.
More than one million people displaced in Lebanon are caught at the intersection of deliberate military policy, weakened state capacity, and an increasingly shrinking international response, while access to adequate shelter and the right to return remain uncertain or outright denied. Regional and international support will be needed to end the war and allow Lebanon to address its repercussions—but without meaningful accountability and a shift in both policy and protection mechanisms, Lebanon’s displacement crisis risks becoming an enduring condition.
