Join this webinar on Lebanon's security assistance and border management, where experts will explore the impact and future of UNSCR 1701.
After months of intense hostilities between the IDF and Hezbollah across the Lebanon-Israel border, calls have grown stronger to re-evaluate, and potentially re-define UNSC Resolution 1701.
UNSCR 1701, aimed at creating lasting stability after the 2006 war, mandated Hezbollah’s withdrawal from south of the Litani River and required Israel to halt incursions beyond the Blue Line. This webinar discusses the role of international security assistance in producing and protecting sovereign borders in Lebanon as authorised and encouraged by UNSCR 1701. While such call has proved effective in purely material terms – since 2006, over $5 billion in security assistance has been delivered – a more critical analysis is needed to understand how, and to what end, these programmes have contributed to the effective security governance of Lebanon.
This webinar presents findings from the XCEPT-funded research project 'Security Assistance and Border Management in Lebanon' conducted during the second half of 2023. Drawing on interviews with donor representatives, embassy staff, security agency personnel, and civil society organisations we discuss the evolution of security assistance over the past 18 years. The findings stress that assistance programmes have been primarily driven by donor priorities, prioritised the green border with Syria over the southern borders, and disproportionally benefitted the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) relative to other security agencies. Societal participation in donor-funded security programming is largely absent, as coordination remains an informal, ad-hoc practice carried out bilaterally between donors and security providers.
Creating a relevant foundation for the re-evaluation of effective security assistance and of UNSCR 1701 specifically, this webinar thus highlights challenges and opportunities of security assistance provision in Lebanon and emphasises the need for a more organic and participatory vision of the future Lebanese state.
This project is funded by The Cross-Border Conflict, Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) programme.