The Lebanese diaspora and health system resilience: channels, contributions, and policy implications

Read this brief here.

This study is the first to systematically map the full architecture of Lebanese diaspora engagement in the health sector, identifying five distinct channels of support and assessing their contributions to health system resilience capacities.

Key messages include:

• Lebanon’s diaspora contributions have become a critical pillar of the country’s health system, injecting financial, human, and social capital during compounding
crises, especially after the 2019 economic collapse.

• Diaspora support flows through five distinct channels: family remittances, local community giving, sectarian networks, informal humanitarian engagement, and
formal institutions. Each operates with its own logic, motivations, and effects.

• A structural paradox shapes diaspora engagement: while diaspora contributes substantial financial, human, operational, and professional assets, it simultaneously reproduces the fragmentation and weak governance that make the system vulnerable to shocks.

• Diaspora contributions have strengthened the absorptive capacity of the health sector by keeping the system functioning during acute shocks, and have shown limited adaptive capacity through rapid reorganisation of resources and agile emergency delivery. However, they have fallen short in leveraging diaspora assets to realise transformative capacity, supporting structural changes including improved governance, greater equity in access to care, and stronger regulatory and financing arrangements that reduce the health system’s long-term vulnerability.

• Realising the transformative potential of diaspora engagement requires differentiated policy mechanisms aligned with each channel’s operating logic, aimed at redirecting diaspora capital toward structural reform rather than crisis absorption alone.

Further information

There’s more on this study – The role of the diaspora in supporting health system resilience in fragile and shock-prone settings – here, including papers and other briefs .