Summer 2006 war on Lebanon: A lesson in community resilience

Within a week of the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, approximately one million people fled their homes to relocate in different displacement centers. A team from the American University of Beirut was involved in relief efforts, in coordination with volunteer groups and several national and international agencies. Public health professionals across the country noted an unusual resilient behavior of the internally displaced persons (IDPs). During their displacement period (July 12-August 14), the IDPs exhibited five features of community resilience: orderly evacuation; rapid self-organization; disciplined and peaceful behavior in displacement centers; phenomenal orderly return to their towns and villages the moment the ceasefire was announced; and a rapid and efficient adaption to post-war conditions. This paper suggests that community resilience is a process rather than an outcome. Data from personal observations, interviews, meetings, and published material were used to examine factors contributing to this resilience. Although manifested at the onset of an adversity, community resilience is built well before the adverse event. The sense of a collective identity, prior experience with wars, and social support networks have contributed to building up IDP's resilience over time, while community cohesiveness, adequate public health interventions, social solidarity, and a connected political leadership helped to sustain it during and shortly after the war. This observation calls for a paradigm shift in disaster relief practice, where relief action should capitalize on community resilience to optimize the use of limited resources during disasters and to rebuild the fundamentals of post-war adaptation.