The COVID-19 outbreak has translated into a major education crisis. Nearly 190 countries have imposed school closures, affecting 1.5 billion children and young people, according to a UN report launched by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week.
While many countries, including Lebanon, switched to distance teaching and learning to mitigate the effects of such disruption, challenges related to preparedness, infrastructure and capacity, as well as the digital gaps, have put additional strains on students, parents, teachers, principals and the educational authorities.
Reaffirming its commitment to combat fake news, the UN is engaged with different partners in Lebanon to counter the surge in the production
and dissemination of disinformation, propaganda and other misleading content.
Part of the solution to the massive amounts of disinformation is to improve the supply of truthful information, and ensure that demand for it is met, through reinforcing journalistic ethics and professionalism, and improving media literacy among consumers of information.
This strategy involves a twopronged combination of awareness raising on the national level and capacity-building for local actors.
In Lebanon, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the country at a time of instability.
In this context, its secondary effects on domestic violence, the gender gap in employment and on unpaid work, risk disproportionately impacting women and girls, and rolling back hard-won gender equality gains.
The Lebanese economy is suffering from the consequences of longstanding development challenges and multiples crises.
Starting from the Syrian crisis in 2011, to the ongoing financial and economic crisis exacerbated further by the COVID-19 health emergency, these shocks are coming at a very high economic and social cost.
IOM, through generous support from the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation and in collaboration with the Lebanese University has launched an executive professional training program “Psychosocial Support, Dialogue and Social Cohesion”.
The course targets Lebanese professionals currently providing psychosocial assistance to conflict-affected communities.
The Ambassador of the European Union in Lebanon, Ralph Tarraf, announced today that the European Union is donating 15 million euros to the World Health Organization to support the health system in Lebanon, with a main focus on access to essential medications to those who need it for the coming two years.
With this support, around 95,000 people from among the most vulnerable Lebanese and refugees will be able to receive on time and for free the chronic disease medications they need, and 350,000 people using the national primary health care centres will benefit from medications for acute conditions.
