The Sisyphean Task of the UNHCR

What social and economic science often calls a shock event is something that heavily impacts the moment but transpires into much more consequential long-term changes of the previous status quo. These changes can be and usually are both boons and challenges. From early in 2011, a series of popular Arab outcries against calcified and corrupt political realities disrupted the power constellations in numerous MENA countries, with results that gradually changed from initial, immense optimism and passion to a new political and social status quo with widely varying up and downsides in the very same countries. The strongest and most lasting impact of those decade-old developments on Lebanon was the country’s necessary intake of Syrian refugees. In parallel, and causally tied to the overpowering need, Lebanon saw substantive increases in the presence of international NGOs and especially a massive boost of its presence by the United Nations’ refugee agency, UNHCR. Inquiring