Situation of Persons with Disabilities in Lebanon

An estimated 10-15% of the Lebanese population has physical, sensory, intellectual, or mental disabilities, according to the more reliable data available. The rate of prevalence is estimated at about 10% among refugees who have fled from Palestine to Lebanon from 1947, at about 8% among Palestinian refugees from Syria, and at 10-22.8% among refugees who have fled Syria since 2011.
There is a systemic lack of provisions for rights, resources, and services for persons with disabilities in Lebanon, due foremost to inaction by the State. As a result, persons with disabilities experience widespread discrimination, marginalisation, exclusion, and violence, at the hands of a range of State and non-State institutions and individuals, in the home and outside. This applies to all areas of their lives. In particular, work and basic services for them are scarce, not accessible, and of poor quality.
The legal framework on the rights of persons with disabilities is limited, and not enforced. Legislation and policies have not embraced a rights-based approach, and tend to exclude disabilities that are not physical from consideration.
Persons with disabilities face adverse political, social, cultural, and economic conditions. This has extremely detrimental effects on their rights, capacities, experiences, and quality of life.
- Actors in formal politics have taken little to no action towards the rights of persons with disabilities.
- General knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours towards persons with disabilities in Lebanon often rely on charitable or medical approaches to disabilities, rather than social or rights-based ones. Lack of knowledge, prejudice, and stigma against persons with disabilities are common – especially against those with intellectual or mental disabilities. Family caregivers also experience a high burden of care work, which negatively affects persons with disabilities.
Multiple types of structural inequalities and living conditions combine to shape the experiences of different persons with disabilities:
- Economic, social, and political structures create broad conditions for vulnerabilities and capacities. These structures include socio-economic class, the types of disabilities, gender, age, nationality, and being a refugee. They particularly disadvantage, respectively: poorer and less educated persons; persons with intellectual or mental disabilities; women, girls, and boys; children, youth, and older persons; and Palestinian and Syrian refugees.
- However, more precise factors provide finer-grainer analyses of vulnerabilities and capacities, especially: family support systems; economic situation; access to services; peer support networks; and assistive devices.
Foreign aid actors had largely ignored disability issues until 2016-2017.
Persons with disabilities and their supporters have significant capacities, with much past and present activism and mobilisations. They have expertise and skills not just about their situation and available assistance, but also about effective mobilisation and activism, and about the overall situation in the country.
Disability in Lebanon remains under-researched, particularly on: the relations between Lebanese political economic and disabilities; rural areas; and the situation of migrant workers (as caregivers and as persons with disabilities)

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