The National Poverty Targeting Programme (NPTP) is Lebanon’s first national social safety net, established in 2011 and implemented by the Ministry of Social Affairs. The Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN), a US$246 million project funded through a World Bank loan, was launched in 2021 to expand safety net coverage amidst increased poverty. WFP has been supporting the NPTP since 2014 for cash assistance and institutional capacity strengthening and is the Government’s implementing partner for cash transfers for the ESSN.
•The ESSN and the NPTP are two social safety nets with a common objective: providing assistance to extremely poor Lebanese families. Yet the programmes have taken different operational, organizational, and governance pathways. There is a growing need and consensus amongst the Government of Lebanon and its partners to take best practices from each programme and pave the way to unified and strengthened systems and programmes for social safety nets.
•The main objectives of this due diligence review of the ESSN and the NPTP are two-fold:
1. Assess the best practices and challenges of each programme to provide recommendations on how best improve the two programmes in view of building a unified social safety net,
2. Enable alignment and buy-in of all stakeholders around the way forward towards social safety net integration in Lebanon.
- assessment is based on a desk review, process mapping, interviews of key stakeholders, and beneficiary consultations that took place between December 2022 and February 2023.
