The City of Zurich and the City of Tyre have decided to enter into a City-to-City Project Partnership with the aim to support the City of Tyre/Lebanon to respond to emerging challenges in connection with the Syrian refugee situation. The overall objective of the partnership is to strengthen the role and functions of the RTO at the technical, social, and networking levels to realize some tangible improvements / benefits towards vulnerable groups including the Syrian refugee. This will be done through providing additional staff to, and developing the capacities of the Regional Technical Office RTO operating under the mandate of the union of municipalities of Tyre.
For practical reasons, the partnership between Zurich and Tyre will be implemented/facilitated by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme UN-Habitat based on its experience in working with municipalities and unions of municipalities, and in establishing and supporting RTOs. For that purpose, the 3 parties (Tyre, Zurich, UN-Habitat) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that clarifies that collaboration framework and specifies each party’s responsibility for the implementation of the Project’s general concern entitled “City to City Partnership - Coping with the Syrian Refugee Crisis on The Local Level”.
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the United Nations agency for human settlements. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.
UN-Habitat has been operating in Lebanon since 2006, with focus on strengthening local governance, urban planning, and basic services. The Programme works closely with municipalities and unions of municipalities aiming to develop their planning and technical capacities to respond to existing and emerging needs. In addition, UN-Habitat collaborates with many public entities at the national level. In the last 3 years, the Programme has been arguing that the crisis in Lebanon is becoming more of an urban nature, having 87% of the population living in cities and urban agglomerations.
The influx of the Syrian refugees since 2011 came to add more strain on Lebanon. UNHCR figures show that some 1.2 million refugees have crossed the Lebanese borders (including 1.16 million registered Syrian refugees and 45,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria). Against a pre-crisis population of around 5 million, Lebanon now has the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, with around one registered Syrian refugee for every three Lebanese.
With the protracted nature of the crisis, cities have become more and more the recipient of large numbers of refugees seeking affordable shelter and cheap jobs. This has impacted on the security situation within the poor neighborhoods of the cities, where rising tension has been observed, and on the service delivery resulted from the increase in the sudden number of population.
Some quick analysis on cities shows the following: - Some 35 % of the refugees coming from Syria are found in the four largest urban metropolitan areas; Tripoli, Beirut, Saida and Tyr;
- The poor urban neighborhoods have the highest density of Lebanese residents. This further correlates with where the vast majority of the refugees have settled, some neighborhoods have since 2011 doubled its population;
- The rapid densification within the structures of already dense built urban areas adds to the burden on already underdeveloped and strained infrastructure networks and poorly maintained buildings;
- 90% of the Palestinian refugee are found within the metropolitan areas of the four largest cities.
Within its projects, UN-Habitat promotes so called “Regional Technical Offices (RTOs)” that are established and operated under the mandate of the Unions of Municipalities (UoMs). The RTO is a unit that comprises motivated local experts and technical persons who aim at strengthening local governance, enhance service delivery, and mainstream planned interventions. RTOs also aim at mobilizing public and civil local actors to collectively address local needs based on available resources. They are strongly connected to various actors on the level of communities, local authorities, public service providers, and int’l & national organizations.
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