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Paper short abstract:

This article documents how communities in Lebanon developed solidarity networks in response to war-induced displacement. These grassroots initiatives challenge traditional humanitarian frameworks by prioritizing local knowledge, mutual aid, and collective care.

Paper long abstract:

Using collective documentation of grassroots responses initiated by communities as a result of Israeli war-induced displacement in Lebanon, this article investigates how local communities can construct decolonial frameworks of crisis response that challenge both hegemonic humanitarian epistemologies and mainstream development approaches. While international agencies continue to operate in traditional development-humanitarian modalities that are likely to replicate colonial power relations, Lebanese communities have mobilized organic solidarity networks that demonstrate the possibilities of recasting crisis response through decolonial action.

Through case studies of community kitchens, informal shelters, and grassroots networks of aid provision, the paper explores the ways in which these initiatives resist formal co-optation in active ways while building solidarity-based responses to both immediate crisis relief and extended community well-being. These networks highlight how local communities navigate intersecting crises through mutual aid and collective care-based practices rather than institutional neutrality.

This article is written in a collaborative narrative style with community organizers, highlighting how their practice overturns mainstream NGO approaches by working towards immediate needs and building more durable, more networked communities through decoloniality. Their practices are lessons in themselves for rethinking development theory and practice in a way that places solidarity and local epistemologies at the forefront.