Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores how RLOs in Lebanon challenge top-down humanitarian frameworks by fostering solidarity-based crisis responses. Through case studies, it highlights how these initiatives reimagine resilience and inform equitable, community-driven approaches to global challenges.

Contribution long abstract:

Reimagining Humanitarian Governance: Refugee-Led Innovations in Crisis Response

This paper explores how refugee-led organizations (RLOs) in Lebanon navigate intersecting crises—protracted displacement, economic collapse, and political instability—to challenge dominant humanitarian paradigms. Rejecting top-down, technocratic approaches, RLOs foster community-driven crisis responses rooted in solidarity, dignity, and collective care.

Through ethnographic case studies, participatory fieldwork, and testimonies from RLO members, the paper highlights how these organizations resist donor-driven constraints while generating alternative forms of knowledge and practice. By centering lived experience and relational networks, RLOs offer effective, adaptive responses to crisis management that prioritize community-defined needs over depersonalized success metrics.

The analysis emphasizes that RLOs do more than respond to crises—they actively reshape humanitarianism and development by reimagining resilience and self-determination. These grassroots initiatives envision solidarity-based models that challenge the systemic inequities embedded in traditional governance structures.

Methodologically, the paper reflects on the challenges of capturing the relational and dynamic nature of RLO responses. It explores how creative formats, such as storytelling and community-centered participatory methods, contribute to new approaches in development research.

Ultimately, this paper argues for a rethinking of development theory and practice, showcasing how the experiences of RLOs in Lebanon can inform more equitable, contextually relevant, and sustainable responses to global challenges. This contribution aligns closely with the panel’s focus on community-led responses and transformative social action by grounding the discussion in local perspectives and innovative practices.