This newsletter captures the latest updates on the implementation of the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) in Lebanon. The newsletter includes the key highlights and achievements of the WPHF programme partners' towards enhancing women’s participation in the Beirut Port Explosion’s response and recovery process.

UN Women is at the forefront of the global drive to remove gender barriers because we believe in a world of justice and human rights for everyone. Towards that end, and as the only United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality, we marshal the world’s best gender expertise and the considerable resources of the United Nations. We connect people in many realms, the national and international, the public and private, activists and officials. Together, our efforts are more than any of us could pursue alone.

This assessment developed by UNW, UNHCR, WFP and UNICEF demonstrate gender inequalities across the Syrian refugee population, limiting access, rights and opportunities for women and girls, particularly as related to economic participation, education, food insecurity, humanitarian assistance, legal issues, and wider protections, including sexual and gender-based violence.

The results detailed in this country brief overwhelming speak to increased concerns for safety, both inside and outside the home (as a result of the pandemic), increased secondary trauma, specifically, the witnessing of violence against women, and online harassment. Most respondents believed tackling gender-based violence to be a priority in the COVID-19 response and voiced a willingness to report violations.

Women and girls admitted to COVID-19 community isolation centers are particularly vulnerable to be subjected to harassment, violence, exploitation and abuse due to specific gendered protection risks, including being confined to an isolated space, the gendered staffing of centers, the economic vulnerability of women and girls, and avenues to seek help being limited or hard to reach. WHO and UN Women are co-leading interventions within the isolation facilities to protection the needs of women and girls, through protection monitoring, ensuring complaint and feedback mechansisms, community messaging, and training and capacity building.

This Gender Alert, issued in May 2020 in partnership with the National Commission for Lebanese Women, UN Women, WHO and UNFPA, focuses on women, gender equality, and the economy in Lebanon over the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides a) observations on GBV issues from the field; b) compiles available secondary data from Lebanon, and, c) consolidates guidance and programmatic tools related to gender issues.