Systemic inequalities including legal restrictions, cultural norms, and discrimination act as key vectors for restricting and conditioning SRHR access for Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Sudanese refugees in Lebanon.
Legal restrictions severely limit refugee mobility and access to SRHR services in Lebanon.
Societal taboos around sex and intimacy stigmatise refugees seeking SRHR services, particularly those with intersecting marginalized identities.
Lebanon's ongoing socioeconomic crisis exacerbates existing SRHR access barriers for refugee populations.
SRHR functions as a key mechanism through which the lives of crisis-affected people are restricted and conditioned.
Humanitarian organisations require systemic reforms across legal, educational, and coordination domains to improve SRHR outcomes for refugees in Lebanon.
This research examines why refugees living in Lebanon — specifically Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Sudanese communities — face major obstacles in accessing sexual and reproductive health services, such as family planning, maternal care, and related healthcare. The study finds that these barriers come from multiple directions at once: government policies that make it expensive or impossible for refugees to maintain legal residency status, cultural and social stigma around discussing sex and reproductive health, and discrimination that is worse for people who belong to multiple marginalized groups (for example, refugees who are also LGBTQ+, disabled, or of a particular racial background). The research argues that access to sexual and reproductive health is not just a medical issue but is deeply tied to broader systems of power and control over refugee populations. Lebanon's ongoing economic crisis makes all of these problems worse, leaving some of the country's most vulnerable residents without access to basic healthcare they need. The compounding of legal, financial, cultural, and social barriers means that refugees face a particularly difficult situation compared to Lebanese citizens. This research suggests that meaningful improvements would require action on several fronts simultaneously: reforming laws that restrict refugee movement and legal status, training healthcare and humanitarian workers to be more culturally sensitive, providing better sex education that is inclusive of diverse identities, and improving coordination between the many organizations working with refugee populations. The authors emphasize that addressing these overlapping systemic issues is essential to upholding the dignity and human rights of refugee communities in Lebanon.
Diab J, Samneh B, Spencer A, Afandi A, Daigle M. (2025). Unmasking the systemic inequalities undermining refugee sexual and reproductive health and rights, intimacy, and access in Lebanon.. Disasters. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.70013