The ‘Municipal Empowerment and Resilience Project’ (MERP) is a joint initiative by UNDP and UN-Habitat. The Project is implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities (MoIM) and is funded by the European Union (EU) through the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis, the ‘Madad Fund’.

The Project aims to strengthen the long-term resilience of subnational authorities in Lebanon as well as host communities, refugees and displaced persons affected by the Syrian Crisis. To achieve this, the Project engages in a three-pronged approach: MERP aims to “1. strengthen processes, procedures and practices to enable Unions of Municipalities (UoMs) and municipalities to deliver effective and efficient services in a transparent and accountable manner; 2. empower UoMs and municipalities to facilitate local economic development (LED) and to deliver basic services that address the needs of both host and refugee populations, and; 3. support communities to engage in municipal processes and procedures to ensure that UoMs and municipalities are responsive to their needs.”

Under its second component, “empower municipalities and UoMs to facilitate local economic development (LED) and to deliver basic services that address the needs of both host and refugee populations”, MERP has been working since 2019 with the three (3) Union of municipalities mentioned above and their member municipalities to identify basic service and LED projects the immediate needs of the host, displaced, and refugee communities in a context of deep crisis. To the extent possible, these projects were selected, keeping in mind the long-term economic development objectives of the Unions and member municipalities as set in their union level strategic plans (if any), municipal planning documents (whenever available), union/municipal decisions (if already taken), or following surgical local consultations in the absence of such documents. This experience confirmed the need for an intervention that would support three (3) targeted UoMs leaders on local economic development efforts within their respective union areas. Such leadership would require their mobilization around a LED process that would allow them ultimately to conduct an active LED policy building on a robust knowledge of the national and local governance systems, urban and territorial constraints and potential, existing economic and market structures, and available human and social capital.

The acquisition of such comprehensive LED knowledge through the implementation of union specific LED assessment was deemed an essential pre-requisite to enable UoMs to envision a consistent role as an enabler of local economic development. Such a role in the future could potentially include pro-active LED planning, partnerships building for LED, institutionalization of LED practices within the structures and capacities of the union, and engagement of potential donors and resources mobilization among others. UoMs’ capacity to implement autonomously sustainable local interventions generating employment and livelihoods would be significantly strengthened.