BBC World Service interview and analysis on Lebanon PM resignation (Segment starts at 4:16).

 

 

Our foreign minister, our official representative to the world, demonstrated that racism has now become part of our national identity—Can anyone really blame him?

Populist policies have been continuously aiming at making Syrian refugees illegal residents, imposing illegal curfews on them, closing down their businesses, and releasing fake news reports which note 300,000 Syrian births per year.

Evidently, racism against Syrians is not a first of its own. Lebanon has endured decades of widespread individual and institutional discrimination against migrant domestic workers, which in itself is grounds for labelling our society as racist and xenophobic at its core.

Now that the conflict next door is beginning to wane, we see an opportunity to rid ourselves of our most recent ‘interlopers’. But the fact that Lebanese citizens feel entitled to blame their socioeconomic troubles on refugees is tongue-in-check cowardice—a matter that has evidently lead societies to self-sabotage.

First thing’s first, it is not the presence of Syrian refugees that is the root cause of Lebanon’s economic malaise. In efforts to ration their scapegoating attempts, many Lebanese point to a period of economic growth prior to the Syrian refugee crisis. Yet we all know full well that economic growth at that time did little for our personal welfare.

Growth in the Lebanese economy has long been funneled to sectors that do not produce job opportunities. In fact, before 2011, the economy produced six times fewer jobs than were needed every year, at just around 3,400 jobs each year. The jobs created were far from being high-paying and highly-productive even though the Lebanese need exactly that to cope with the rampant prices rises.

It is certainly undeniable that our country’s bizarre rules of economic gravity mean that prices go up, but never come down, even when the costs of production plummet. Beyond brandishing leaders as ‘thieves’ (and willingly voting for them), we fail to fully comprehend how our economy is structured in such a way that ordinary people never reap the benefits of any economic growth. The only real study into who and how sectors are owned in Lebanon was one completed in 2003. At the time, Lebanon was still seriously contemplating entering the World Trade Organization and needed to pass competition legislation to do so—something which never transpired.

This study– which the Ministry of Economy and Trade felt appropriate to publish with a caveat that it did not ‘endorse or validate’ its findings — shows that half the products sold in the Lebanese market comes from sectors where there is an oligopoly in place, or where only a few companies dominate the sector. For instance, the study found that 72 percent of farms in the country were controlled by 6 percent of farmers. The same applies for other products related to food production, like mineral water, pesticides, fuel and so on.

It’s no wonder that the ministry tried to wash its hands of the study’s findings.

Of course, a lot has changed since 2003, and a lot still hasn’t. Lebanon still imports around 80 percent of its goods, and only one lucky company has the right to import any one product—the exclusive agent. This system is as much a result of opportunistic importers as it is public policy (or lack thereof).

In effect, it means that there can be no competition between a product’s suppliers: The price of any one consumable good is set by one company with no incentive to provide the product at an affordable price.

Anti-trust or pro-competition legislation which prevents firms from colluding to fix prices inside sectors at relatively high levels to maximize their profits, otherwise known as a cartel, are still absent today. An economic system of cartels supported by policies and kickbacks that allow them to expand their power over the market is known as a kleptocracy, clearly defined as the “rule by thieves.” Naturally, any economic growth deepens and accelerates this process in such a system: Prices rise, wages don’t, normal people suffer, and the elite prosper. None of this had or has anything to do with Syrian refugees so far.

The Lebanese may even want to thank the Syrians for coming to their country. Lower consumer and investor confidence in the wake of the refugee influx slowed economic growth, which slowed the perpetuation of the vicious cycle of rising prices and falling wages. Billions of dollars in aid has come to Lebanon. And in fact, for every dollar of aid that has arrived, the Lebanese economy actually grew by 1.6 dollars, largely in cash and to sectors that were withering such as education, transport, and manufacturing.

The proliferation of the aid industry comes with its own problems, particularly the aid dependency which will become glaring once the humanitarians pack up and leave, probably to Syria. But to get an accurate reading of the real effect of the refugee influx on the economy, one would need to assess how refugees have affected the supply and demand of labor and capital. Those studies have been conducted and have not been published, something which is an open secret in the development industry. The reason behind such confidentiality is that these studies findings show that the net effect on jobs Lebanese worked in was next to zero. In other words, the Lebanese have not lost their jobs or livelihoods because Syrian refugees exploited them. What’s not surprising is that these studies have been buried by those same kleptocrats.

Consequently, instead of enacting legislation to correct the structural imbalances in the economy, our ruling class have been busy figuring out how to raise indirect taxes on ordinary people to fund their patronage system, otherwise known as public sector employment. Indirect taxes, such as Value Added Tax, are simple to collect but they impose a heavy burden on poorer people in the country, because everyone pays the same amount of tax no matter how much they make. Thus, the share of a rich person’s tax burden is much lower than that of a poor person. Instead of indirect taxes, the government could impose higher direct taxes on higher-income earners, thus redistributing income and wealth in the economy. Instead, firms are raising prices in anticipation of new taxes. Again: Prices rise, wages don’t, normal people suffer and the elite prosper.

The real reason mainstream Lebanese citizens are suffering is not because of a poor refugee living in a tent, it’s actually a concept called elite capture, or when ‘resources transferred for the benefit of the masses are usurped by a few, usually politically and/or economically powerful groups, at the expense of the less economically and/or politically influential groups.’ By controlling economic and political power, the elites conserve their status and deflect all blame onto the weakest segments of society who have little ability to defend themselves. Sounds familiar? It should: Donald Trump does so with immigrants in the United States, the Burmese Junta does it to the Rohingyar in Myanmar and we (and most notably our foreign minister) do it to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.  The real problem with scapegoating is that it allows the status quo to persist.

The result of avoiding the root cause of a problem is inevitably that it festers. If that continues to happen, Lebanon will succumb to more income and wealth inequality that eventually manifests into the kind of social upheaval our region has been going through since the Arab uprisings.

In all honesty, what we Lebanese really fear is really just another explosive class war. Our last civil war was as much about class as it was about anything else. If we are to have another, it will have very little to do with refugees.

First published by Beirut Today on October 27, 2017. 

It should come as little surprise that social entrepreneurs across the Middle East and North Africa have become rather lackadaisical over the state their sector — and with good reason.

Much like a teenager who has come of age, the mindset change required for the sector to enter the next stage of its life has presented itself: if social enterprises are to alter the socio-economic status quo, they will need to get beyond the hype, enter the halls of government, the meeting rooms of investors, and prove that they are mature enough to produce social change.

For starters, there is a need to take stock of what has taken place.

Blurred lines: NGO or business?

Ten years ago, no one in the region spoke of social enterprises, at least not in the way they do now. Today support ecosystems in place; home-grown businesses focused on social change and income generation are budding across the region.

Throughout this process, development has also come with an identity crisis: it is telling that the enterprises which have garnered the most success are also those who are least enthusiastic about the concept of ‘social enterprises’.

Indeed, the lines between social enterprises, traditional enterprises and NGOs have become so blurry that 30 percent of enterprises and support organizations we spoke to during our last piece of research on social enterprise development don’t believe the term ‘social enterprise’ describes their business — some even refuse to accept the concept exists. Its likely not incidental that those same enterprises are those which have proven the most successful and, by and large, contain a tech component as part of their core business model.

Often keen to play father figure, governments in the region have not stepped in to provide guidance. Indeed, without a clear regulatory framework to govern social enterprises separately from traditional business or NGOs, the distinction between them remains abstract.

For entrepreneurs who have to contend with the region’s decrepit regulatory regimes, their balance sheet shows no material difference between an enterprise and a ‘social’ enterprise.

The same is true for entrepreneurs who choose the NGO-model: if enterprises are not profit oriented, they can hardly be classified as enterprises to begin with. Creating a legal space for social enterprises won’t necessarily resolve the issue either.

Big brother’s tool

When the hype around the social benefits of cooperative business models began to take hold decades ago, governments in the region created a separate regulatory regime for cooperatives.

Almost immediately, political parties saw an opening, began to abuse cooperatives to dodge taxes and funnelled money towards their constituents.

Today, with some exceptions, cooperatives in the region are largely ineffective at best, and tools for patronage at worst.

So while introducing a legal regime for social enterprises would provide clarity, confidence and incentivise the social enterprise sector, doing so will need to avoid a repeat of the cooperative experience.

Change the basics first

Regulatory tools such as asset locks, conflict of interest legislation and sector-specific reporting requirements have proven effective in other places, and would help the region’s social entrepreneurs focus their aims and measure their impact. But before embarking on a years-long new regulatory endeavour, simple long-awaited reforms can to be introduced today.

Other than stifling competition and impeding access to enterprise development to protect market share for existing businesses (and their interests), there is little justification for governments to uphold draconian bankruptcy laws which expose entrepreneurs to a jail cell if they bounce a check.

In an age where entrepreneurs in Kenya (not to mention more developed economies) register their businesses online, requiring new businesses to hire lawyers, auditors and put up large amounts of initial capital before they can even contemplate revenue amounts to exclusionary protectionism and oligarchy.

Informing investors

Investors in the region must also think outside of the box if the social enterprise sector is going to mature.

The common adage among investors has been that social enterprises don’t have the capacity to scale because their business models are more about social change than the bottom line. In part, they are right.

Many of the region’s social entrepreneurs still don’t have a solid understanding of how their businesses can create value in the long term. But investors are also wrong to think social enterprises cannot scale: there is no greater ‘market opportunity’ in the region than the value added by turning social ills into positive cash flow.

Instead of investing in 10 tech companies with a five-year 70 percent return on investment (ROI), hoping that one of them hits jackpot, investors can also consider funding a social enterprise with a long term ROI of 20 percent. There is enough money, resources and rationale for both approaches.

What’s more, without institutional investor interest social enterprises have to look to donor funding to stay afloat. Instead of focusing on longer-term financial sustainability, social enterprises need to spend donor money quickly to produce short-term outputs which fit the often fickle agendas of various donors.

None of that is going to produce the kind of social change or enterprises the region needs.

We need a change of attitude

Without substantive change, the wave of social entrepreneurship which began in earnest after the Arab uprisings now risks washing up on the rocks.

It’s hard to imagine region’s governments and institutional investors somehow changing their attitudes toward social enterprises because they suddenly feel a streak of altruism.

Instead, social entrepreneurs and support organizations need to interpret ‘developing the ecosystem’ as something which goes beyond boot camps, incubators and workshops which only the well-educated minority of the region can access.

That will entail admitting that there is an ‘access-to-entrepreneurship’ problem for lower-income and rural populations as well as opening up the space for those populations to enter.

With more people on board with the idea of social entrepreneurship, creating pressure groups to lobby government for structural reforms will be more effective, as will the effect of those reforms on the mindset of investors.

Much has been achieved and the social enterprise sector has grown up, but now it’s time to be an adult.

Originally published by Wamda on March 30, 2017.

 

The proportion of Syrian refugees who are food secure has fallen from 32 percent in 2013 to 11 percent in 2015. In this photo, taken in 2014, Ahmed, 15, from Raqqa starts a generator to provide electricity for his family’s tent in an encampment for refugees in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Lack of power makes it impossible to keep food in such circumstances. European Commission | Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0

By Sami Halabi

There is an old Lebanese saying for reassurance in troubled times. For years, comparatively well-off people have told others, especially children, that ‘ma fi hadan bimout min el jou’’ (no one dies of hunger) when they complain excessively. While that may be true for some, five years of a refugee crisis coupled with long-standing structural issues are threatening that age-old adage and the confidence that buoys it.

Unsettling statistics

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. People may not know it, but Lebanon has entered a new phase of food insecurity and, while malnutrition is not yet a problem, food security has been falling across the country. According to the latest figures from the United Nations, the proportion of Syrian refugees who are food secure has fallen from 32 percent in 2013 to 11 percent in 2015. Out of an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in the country, only 165,000 have stable access to nutritious food.

With poverty rates increasing from around 28 percent in 2004-2005 to around 32 percent by 2013, according to several estimates cited last month by the World Bank Group, there are indications that the Lebanese are also becoming more food insecure. The latest figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization show that around 11 percent now cannot access their basic food consumption needs, 31 percent do not have access to healthy food and 49 percent are worried they will not have enough food to feed themselves over the course of the year.

Of course, one only needs to walk into the supermarket to understand why this is happening. In 2008, food inflation rose 18.1 percent. From 2008 to 2013 food prices rose some 45 percent. Obviously this looks bad for a government who is supposed to protect the food security of the country. But instead of using their authority to regulate food prices or creating more job opportunities, the government re-indexed inflation in December 2013 and voila, they now claim that inflation (and food inflation) is in negative territory and prices are falling.

Government inaction

To be fair, global food prices fell by 0.95 percent in 2014 and 0.64 percent in 2015, but that is also related to today’s low oil prices, the relatively strong dollar and stunted economic growth, all of which bode well for inflation. Prices are sticky for the same reason they have always been; we live in a country where price fixing and oligopolies are rife and there is no national economic vision.

Government subsidies on bread production have already proven ineffective and disproportionately beneficial to those with more income, not the poor who need the most support. Lebanon also never really benefited from the fruits of free trade because the World Trade Organization accession was halted once oligopolists realized obligatory competition regulation would run contrary to the moneyed interests that keep prices up and wages stagnant. At the same time, Lebanon threw open its doors to foreign food imports through both bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. Now we are up to 80 percent import dependent for our food, while our agricultural sector is in retreat.

Being physically able to bring in more food over the past years allowed our country to adapt to more than 1.5 million new mouths to feed. Yet, as those mouths become more food insecure and food aid dependent, the government also restricts them from working or possessing assets that can help them feed themselves. Restricting refugee labor is considered a sound policy to the extent that it can protect employment opportunities for unemployed Lebanese citizens. However, requiring refugees to abandon their refugee status and become sponsored migrant workers to perform menial jobs is a narrow-minded and zero-sum proposition when those restrictions increase food insecurity.

Instead of forcing Syrian refugees into informal labor and exposing them to abuse, a more intelligent and humane policy would be to allow them to work alongside Lebanese in agriculture. Permitting refugees to own assets that are used in agricultural production would strengthen food security in the country and produce more jobs for everyone. At the same time, Lebanon needs to stop being complacent about food security. The government must devise an integrated Food and Nutrition Security Strategy which rationalizes trade, market and production against resources and actually implement it.

Lebanon cannot wait for another food price shock to compel the government to act. People have already started to go hungry, and soon they may turn angry.

First published in Executive Magazine’s May 2016 Issue

The Government of Lebanon and its concerned Ministries together with national and international partners are collaborating to address the country’s food security and nutrition challenges and to progress towards the implementation of Agenda 2030’s sustainable development goals. In their support, and to study the current situation with a view towards enabling the prioritization of policy reforms, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP) joined forces to commission an in-depth analysis of the country’s food security and nutrition context.

The report analyses the availability, accessibility, utilization and stability of food consumption and production in Lebanon and provides comprehensive recommendations to support Lebanon achieve SDG 2. Among the report’s key findings is the need to reform food trade, market regulation and production responses to food and nutrition security in order to increase economic access to food.

The report found that Lebanese and refugee populations alike face food insecurity challenges. An alarming 49 percent of Lebanese are reportedly worried about their ability to access enough food, and 31 percent of them stating that they were unable to eat healthy and nutritious food over the course of a year. In addition, overall increasing food prices and changes in dietary preferences lead to new challenges, including micronutrient deficiencies and increasing levels of obesity.

The discussion makes a case for economic, social and environmental policies that require greater integration and cooperation among many public, private and civil society institutions in Lebanon in order to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.”

Download the Full Report Co-authored by Sami Halabi

I am an aggressive hyper-masculine Lebanese man. And, as such, of course I’d start this article by being direct, if not confrontational with you, my reader, because that’s how I’ve always been and it’s worked out fine. Why would I waste my time with the nuance of an analogy that captures some subtle expression of masculinity and the patriarchy? If anyone wants to criticise my approach, I’ll stand my ground, unwavering, and concede only the minutest of points. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll escalate, make the problem about something deeper and more offensive. What’s important is that everyone knows I am more willing to enter into a conflict to get my way than to have to listen to anything that I don’t agree with.

As a child I grew up fast, by six I could turn a tree branch into a wooden knife. I had a little troop of boys my age and a little older who used to walk around the school yard and bully the younger boys. I’m not proud of it, but I was smaller than the other boys, so nastiness had to compensate for size. A few years later I started to play rugby, I got bigger, meaner, and learned how to objectify women. By the time I was 15 I was full-blown macho. I thought that I could impress everyone and beat up anyone who I couldn’t. Overplaying my gender role worked quite well and our society was hugely responsive to my pubescent notion of my masculine self, so I kept at it. As I grew up into my early twenties I did what worked; I acted like an oversized rooster, talked big, sang loud, puffed up my chest and did what I wanted, especially if it was deviant. The incredible thing was that everyone around me seemed to accept and even embrace my attitude. I was fully aware of the imbalance between myself and others who could not be as macho or overtly aggressive and still, almost everyone treated me like I was doing what I should have been doing. My experience growing up socialised as a hyper-masculine male was not unlike many of the Lebanese men that I know. It’s the way we, the majority of Lebanese men, have been taught we should behave as men. We use aggression and force to solve many of our daily problems. I was good at it and it brought me far in life, until I knew it needed to stop. Where my aggression didn’t work well was at home. The transmogrification of the little terror into a thumping opinionated young man did not fare well within the context of my immediate and extended families. Because, while we are expected to act like ‘men,’ we are also expected to maintain reverence to the strong men of the tribe throughout and this I could not do. The overly-masculine, rejectionist and abrasive self that I had constructed could not accept that there were other men who could, by default rather than merit, wield power over me due to the sequencing of their birth. Almost as soon as I began to question the legitimacy of their power, I began to question the legitimacy of mine.

It started in my mid-20s when I realised that to continue to learn in this life, I needed to stop being pig-headed and start to accept others’ viewpoints as, at least possibly, worth listening to. So I became a journalist. I also began to realise that maturity only comes after a tremendous amount of concerted effort in examining one’s own mind and ego. Over time I also began to see how our concept of masculinity helps glorify the type of arrogant, violent and domineering behavior that is destroying any hope of reforming our politics and society, and reflected in the way we are governed. Even many (mostly male) activists, journalists and others whose job it is to lobby for reform in our society continue to feel that their role is merely to reject what they disagree with and project their feelings in the most abrasive forms possible. And it is precisely this approach which creates the vicious and contradictory circle that keeps us where we are in our society. If we men were merely aggressive rejectionists, then at some point we would also challenge the top-down patriarchal structures that govern our homes, schools, religion and politics to be something more horizontal and inclusive. But because we are also taught to perpetuate the topdown structure, male aggressiveness is channeled to target those who are less empowered to fight back, thus quashing any opposition to the structure itself. When I began to challenge the power structures in my own home, the result was pure and protracted conflict, at first. It was not until I began to understand that the battles I was having were more about my knee-jerk rejectionist attitude and lack of viable alternatives than any deep injustice I was enduring. Once I began to seek out alternative arrangements that everyone in my family circle could live with, things began to resolve themselves and I became less angry.

Having grown up in the information age, my younger male cousins were also developing alternatives to aggressive behavior. As they matured, it was clear that their rejection of the overriding male power structure was less abrasive than mine. Without the drama of arguments and fisticuffs, they quietly carved out their own alternative existence by using the wealth of resources that the information age progressively provided for them. At the same time, the older generations reacted accordingly, almost knowingly, by retracting their insistence on an antiquated method of familial, educational and societal imposition. The combination of more information and rejection of overly masculine power will not necessarily be the key to change in Lebanon; if anything this country has proved that there is no silver bullet that can solve our problems. But as the men of this nation, no matter how jaded our past, it’s time to start thinking about who we want to be when we finally grow up.

First published in FRAME in the Spring of 2016

The research project was launched in response to the severe depletion of fish stocks and livelihoods among artisanal fishers in the district of Tyre, Lebanon. In order to create the circumstances to transition fishing practices and regulation from their current state to one where a sustainable and integrated strategy could be implemented, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the Association of for the Development of Rural Capacities commissioned a market opportunity and value chain analysis to understand what type of microfinance-related interventions–including skills training programmes, loan terms, and livelihood assistance–would produce sustained additional income streams and open avenues for implementation and enforcement of sustainable fishing. As such, the research aimed to answer four principal questions:

1. Analyse domestic market opportunities open to fishing communities through assessment of local capacities, potential competitive and comparative advantages as well as seasonality of supply-demand of fishery goods and services, market access, and productive potentials of different domestic market locations.
2. Identify potential sectors where mircoenterprises would focus on activities complementary to the fisheries sector;
3. Identify profitable markets with growth potential for these mircoenterprises’ products and services which are not directly related to the fisheries sector;
4. Identify opportunities for fishing community household members including entrepreneurial women and young labour market entrants.
5. Identify what form and level of engagement skills capacity development should take in suggested economic sectors.

To learn more about the project contact the author.

“There is an awakening happening,” says Beirut protestor

Full radio interview on protests in Beirut at 39:21

Towards a New Integrated Labour Policy in the Arab World – نحو سياسة عمل متكاملة في العالم العربي

The status and nature of labor and employment across the region was one of the underlying causes of the Arab uprisings and remains a major problem today. Long overlooked or discarded as unrealistic before the current transition, the integration of labor markets in a manner that addresses the core issues at hand could form the basis of a region-wide response to region-wide problems. At the centre of this integration policy will need to be an “Arab Jobs Pact” (AJP), an agreement between Arab states that integrates regional labor policies through supranational management. This proposed AJP is based on five pillars: transitioning labor policy from national to supranational management, administering flows of labor between and within states, matching education with the skills needed for productive jobs, focusing investment on job-intensive sectors and enterprise development, and developing active labor market programmes.

See more at: Khamsoon.com