Palestinian Women Economic Empowerment Initiative

Palestinian women refugees’ work in the informal economy is often in activities with marginal returns and occupationally segregated. They receive inconsistent and often inadequate wages, work in insecure job environments, and receive little or no social protection. They have neither the security of property rights, nor the bargaining power and leverage to improve their choices. They predominantly work alone and have yet to tap into the potential power of pooling their resources to reach a common business goal. Their work is rightly termed “informal” as it is “not recognized, protected or regulated by the public authority.” For Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, structural obstacles, including legal and institutional obstacles, force their work in the informal economy, since they continue to be precluded from basic labour rights by law. As a result, the bulk of all employment for Palestinian refugees is in the informal economy, characterized by poor-quality employment, the absence of rights at work, inadequate social protection, and the lack of representation and voice. Palestinians are not legally entitled to form voluntary associations between themselves, including cooperatives. Instead they form “gatherings,” which behave as informal cooperatives and are predominantly concentrated in agriculture, manufacturing and handicrafts sectors. Subsequent to the 2007 NBC crisis, it is estimated that 30,000 refugees were displaced while 5,000 families lost their main source of livelihood. The ILO has been implementing projects on women entrepreneurship development and promoting workers’ rights in the informal economy across the region and will draw upon this knowledge, expertise and experience in the implementation of the initiative. The development objective of the project is to address decent work deficits at work in the refugee camp economy of Nahr El Bared (NBC) and Beddawi (BC) in North Lebanon, while promoting economic empowerment and cooperation among women entrepreneurs. To date, while several development initiatives have addressed Palestinian employability in Lebanon, none of the projects have focused on achieving decent work conditions through the formation of business groups and tailoring business development services on the basis of needs of these groups.

Project symbol

LEB/10/03/SDC

Admin unit

RO-Arab States/DWT-Beirut

Start date

31/10/2010

End date

31/03/2013

Total allocation

477011

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

477141

Development Partners

Switzerland, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation

Country/Countries

Lebanon

Outcomes

Employment Promotion