When survival frays the social fabric: a humanitarian practitioner’s reflection on poverty, mental health and the silent rise of crime in Lebanon

As Lebanon’s protracted crisis deepens, the erosion of basic needs is reshaping livelihoods, behaviour, mental wellbeing, and the fragile threads of social cohesion. Drawing from years of field experience, this reflection examines how deprivation, humiliation and psychosocial distress intersect to fuel desperation, hostility and crime. It argues for a humanitarian practice that does not simply treat symptoms, but confronts the emotional and structural roots of social fragmentation.

The crisis beyond numbers

For over a decade, I have worked across Lebanon’s humanitarian landscape, moving between community centres, field offices and meeting rooms where hardship is translated into percentages. Behind every percentage is a face. I recall a mother in the south asking quietly for milk. When told none was available, she murmured:

‘I will water it down; he won’t know.’

That sentence has stayed with me longer than any log frame.

Lebanon’s collapse has exceeded technocratic vocabulary. We are living the slow unravelling of dignity, safety and psychological stability. The World Bank’s 2024 Poverty and Equity Assessment estimated that ‘73% of Lebanese and nearly all non-Lebanese residents […] live in multidimensional poverty’ that affects access to electricity, healthcare and education. This has thus culminated in nearly half the population now living below the poverty line. As of mid-2025, World Food Programme monitoring indicated that approximately one in five people were facing crisis-level food insecurity (IPC 3), meaning households were skipping meals, entering debt, or selling essentials simply to eat.

However, said figures cannot capture the quiet violence of deprivation: the father who skips meals so his children can eat, the teacher who takes a second job as a cleaner, or the young man who sells his phone to pay for electricity.

I used to think my work was about providing relief. Now I see it as preventing despair from curdling into something darker: resentment, aggression, crime and emotional collapse.

The poverty–stress–crime continuum

As food insecurity deepened, a pattern emerged: thefts rose, tempers shortened, adolescent aggression became more visible and domestic violence escalated. These were not coincidences. When basic needs collapse, behaviour erodes.

Poverty in Lebanon is not solely economic, it is emotional and existential. It is humiliation, uncertainty and the exhausting vigilance of survival mode that deplete dignity. People do not merely struggle to eat, they struggle to remain whole. Food insecurity breeds anxiety. Anxiety fuels conflict. Conflict fractures relationships and isolation paves the path to crime.

I have met fathers who apologised for stealing bread. Adolescents who joined street groups not out of rebellion, but because belonging, however dangerous, felt safer than invisibility. Crime, in many cases, is not deviance or malice; it is the vocabulary of despair.

What we don’t capture in reports

We are disciplined in our monitoring; we count sessions, disaggregate data and report on outputs with precision. Yet our systems struggle to quantify emotional erosion. We rarely measure humiliation, chronic stress, or the suffocating silence of a household where anger has replaced hope.

In one programme, we distributed cash assistance. It enabled survival, yet households remained volatile. During a focus group, a mother said:

‘The cash feeds us, but it does not stop the shouting at home.’

Her words shifted something in me. Poverty relief without emotional relief is incomplete.

We integrated simple psychosocial elements into distributions: grounding exercises, brief counselling, support circles. No additional line items. Within months, feedback changed. Fewer household conflicts. More breathing room. Humanitarian assistance is not only food and shelter; it is also emotional relief, a form of psychological triage.

Lessons from the field and beyond: what I’ve learned

Protection, livelihoods and mental health are often operationally distinct. Yet in reality, they form a single continuum. Poverty fuels psychological strain. Psychological strain fuels conflict. Conflict fuels shame and withdrawal. When this cycle embeds within a community, it is not merely vulnerable; it is fragile.

At a UN crime-prevention booth, I once participated in an exercise ranking causes of crime. The sticky notes read: unemployment, family breakdown, drug use, mental illness, revenge, poverty. Initially, my mind went to trauma and untreated psychological wounds. But when I saw ‘poverty,’ something settled heavily in my chest. Poverty explains the ‘why’. It devours dignity and pushes people beyond moral thresholds.

If poverty sits at the root of so many of these choices, our role is neither to romanticise suffering nor to resign ourselves to inevitability. We cannot dismantle macroeconomic collapse, but we can soften its psychological and social consequences while advocating for systemic solutions. Recognise poverty not only as a lack of income, but as a chronic emotional state that erodes dignity and clouds judgement. Embed mental health and protection within livelihoods. Pair cash with coping tools and community connection. Treat each interaction not as service delivery, but as a moment of social stabilisation. Poverty may be structural, but despair is preventable.

We cannot solve poverty in a collapsing economy, but we can ensure that poverty does not metastasise into hopelessness or harm. That is where our duty begins. Years of working in this landscape have taught me:

• Assistance is violence prevention. Cash and food reduce tension, by preventing crises before they manifest as harm.
• Mental health is protection. Emotional literacy and coping skills equip families to withstand stress without fracturing.
• Livelihoods are dignity, not just income. Employment restores dignity, agency and the ability to write one’s own narrative.
• Community tension is data. Local committees often observe stress before indicators capture it; they are early-warning systems.
• Impact must include emotional outcomes. Hope, calm and dignity are valid and pivotal humanitarian results.

Translating insight into practice

We cannot reverse economic collapse, but we can shape how communities experience it. We can design programmes that do not simply buffer suffering, but actively prevent its psychological and social corrosion.

In practice, simple shifts matter. Embed brief mental health support into livelihoods sessions. Train cash focal points in stress first aid. Create referral pathways that sit naturally between cash, education and mental health services. Ask protection caseworkers to assess not only vulnerability, but tension, exhaustion and early signs of distress.

Part of this shift requires an understanding of the humanitarian–development–peace nexus. In Lebanon, it is not a strategic aspiration but a lived reality. Families do not separate survival from dignity, nor food from safety, nor livelihoods from hope. Our programming should not either. Integration is a necessity. A livelihoods center can be a protection hub. A child-friendly space can be an emotional stabilisation entry point. A municipality meeting can be governance support and early warning for tension. We are already doing nexus work. We must recognise its value, fund it consistently and measure it honestly. When we do, we move from responding to symptoms to protecting social fabric.

The ethical shift we need: reclaiming the human in humanitarian

Neutrality in the face of structural injustice is not neutrality; it is abandonment. Humanitarian practitioners must evolve beyond transactional provision toward emotional and social stabilisation, even amidst shrinking budgets. A queue can be a site of dignity or humiliation. A workshop can dispense information or cultivate resilience and solidarity. A livelihoods class can teach skills, or also restore identity and hope. In a world of limited funding, intentionality becomes the most renewable resource we possess. We may not give more, but we can give differently; small shifts in design and delivery, rather than additional cost, can keep a life from folding in on itself.

We must design programmes that heal both hunger and humiliation, both trauma and tension. This does not always require new grant lines or complex architecture. Often, the most meaningful shifts happen in the smallest decisions. A cash-distribution day can open with a brief grounding exercise or a 10-minute coping circle. A livelihoods class can include a weekly reflection on stress and self-worth, not only entrepreneurship techniques. A case manager can ask one more question: not only, ‘What do you need?’ but also, ‘How are you holding up?’. Community committees can use simple tools to spot rising tension and create calm spaces before conflict erupts.

In one project, we paired vocational training with soft-skills circles led by a community facilitator. It cost almost nothing, yet participants repeatedly said the sessions made them feel ‘seen again’. In another, cash recipients were offered short psychosocial check-ins while waiting, rather than standing silently in queues. Small adjustments, woven into existing activities, can restore dignity and ease emotional strain without adding budget lines. In a time of austerity, creativity and presence become forms of protection.

Closing reflection

Humanitarian work in Lebanon is not only about saving lives, it is about safeguarding the capacity to remain human under duress. Crime, despair and survival are neighbouring thresholds. If we intervene before desperation becomes action, we do more than assist – we prevent harm.

I no longer believe aid alone can repair Lebanon. I do believe in empathetic, integrated programming that treats people as more than recipients, as holders of dignity, pain and endurance. Behind every intervention lies a human being trying, despite everything, to stay whole.

Robin Jolina El-Habbas is a humanitarian practitioner and programme development specialist with over a decade of experience supporting protection, social stability and resilience programming across Lebanon. Her work explores the interplay between poverty, mental wellbeing and community cohesion in protracted crises, grounded in a belief that dignity and emotional safety are as essential as food and shelter.