Tripoli – Cedar Centre for Legal Studies

On 2 March 2026, the Israeli war on Lebanon began. Within days, schools and institutes across the North were filled with families who had arrived with only what they could carry. They came with frightened children, light bags packed in a hurry, and questions with no answers, Where will we sleep tonight? When can we go back? Is there still a home to return to?

In those heavy moments, Cedar Centre for Legal Studies (CCLS) had one place to be: beside the people. By the last week of March, its team was already in the field, before the first shock of those days had even settled.

The project, titled “Rapid Assistance for Displaced and Vulnerable Families in Northern Lebanon”, was launched under the “Stronger Together” campaign and ran from March to October 2026. After eight months, the response had reached about 983 families at 50 sites across several districts, including Tripoli, Akkar, Koura, Dinniyeh, Zgharta and Batroun. Behind every one of these numbers stands a family with faces, names and stories.

From Assessment to Distribution: Ask Before You Give

The team did not set out with a truck loaded with whatever was available. It began with a step that is simpler and harder: listening. After coordinating with the Ministry of Social Affairs, the team visited the shelters, in schools and institutes, sat down with families and filled in needs-assessment questionnaires, so that aid would be measured by need, not by what a donor happened to offer.

From these conversations and questionnaires came the list of assistance: ready-to-eat food rations for those with no kitchen and no cooking gas, safe drinking water, cleaning and sanitation supplies, medicines, milk and diapers for the little ones, and finally cash assistance.

Between April and September, 1,320 ready-to-eat food rations were distributed across North Lebanon. But food was only the beginning of the many forms of assistance Cedar Centre delivered:

1. About 1,492 hygiene and essential items, including 712 hygiene boxes, 52 dignity kits for women and girls, 135 mattresses and 175 blankets, among other things, so that families could find a cleaner, warmer place to sleep.
2. 825 gallons of drinking water reached shelters in Tripoli and its surroundings and Al-Hissa camp in Akkar.
3. 1,044 items for children and infants, including milk, diapers, clothing vouchers, stationery and toys, because childhood does not wait for a war to end before it needs tenderness and warmth.
4. 311 medicines and medical supplies, along with thermometers and oximeters.

When Cash Assistance Means Dignity

Rations and boxes are not always enough. There is the displaced family that needs to pay rent after fleeing home with nothing, having found no place in a shelter. There is the elderly man who wants to buy his own medicine regularly. There is the family left with no roof after their home collapsed and they lost their children. And there are many other stories. That is why the Centre provided USD 7,245 to 84 families, ranging from USD 50 to USD 200 per family, according to the level of need.

Most of it went to families from the collapsed buildings in Tripoli, families who lost their homes and some of their loved ones in a single moment, and who needed more than assistance: they needed a hand reaching out in the dark. Alongside them were women-headed households, elderly people, persons with disabilities and chronic illnesses, and families who had lost their livelihoods. These sums were not handed out in bulk. The team sat with each case and decided only after studying it individually, because every family carries a different pain.

Psychosocial Support: The Side That Cannot Be Seen

Those who have lived through displacement know that loss does not end with walls. War leaves behind an anxiety that follows a person into sleep, a fear that seeps into family relationships, and an exhaustion that no ration or blanket can explain. That is why psychosocial support was at the heart of the response, not an add-on to it.

Cedar Centre’s psychologist and social worker carried out 70 psychosocial support sessions, recording 506 participations by women, men and children, in individual and group sessions and recreational activities for children. In these sessions, people found a space to say what no one had been there to hear, and children learned that play was still possible.

At Al-Hissa camp in Akkar, the Centre organized recreational and educational activities for children, including “How Do I Protect Myself”, “We Play with Love, We Interact with Respect” and “Colors and Hope”. For the 13–17 age group, a session titled “Who Am I… What Do I Want to Be” was held, in which each teenager wrote their strengths on one sheet of paper and their dreams on another, and hung both on a “Tree of Strength”. Simple ideas that tell teenagers living in a temporary place that their future is not temporary.

In addition, the Centre’s lawyer provided legal awareness and free consultations to displaced people on their rights, birth registration, renewing documents and how to file complaints.

Where Aid Rarely Reaches

There are places that never make the news bulletins or the response lists, and they are prisons and detention facilities. After detainees were transferred to northern prisons from prisons in the South and Beirut, the cells became overcrowded beyond capacity. The Cedar Centre team therefore entered prisons, police stations and detention facilities in Tripoli, Amioun, Zgharta, Batroun and Dinniyeh, bringing with it what could ease the harshness of the place: food rations, cleaning and sanitation supplies, mattresses and blankets, medicines and medical supplies, and more.

This is where the purpose of the whole project took shape: assistance reached every displaced person without exception, on an equal basis. Families who came from war-affected areas, families who lost their homes in building collapses in Tripoli, and families who arrived from the Syrian coast to Akkar and Jabal Mohsen. In moments like these, hunger does not ask about identity, and cold does not ask for an ID card.

Partnerships That Made the Difference

A result like this is not made by one hand. The project relied on a broad coordination network that included the Ministry of Social Affairs, municipalities, mokhtars, security agencies and local and international organizations, along with a hotline through which families not registered with any entity reached the Centre, families who would have stayed out of sight of the response were it not for a single phone call. This coordination helped reach those most in need and avoid duplication of assistance.

The Team Behind the Numbers

At every one of these sites, the same faces kept appearing: the Centre’s coordinator, who filled in the questionnaires and listened to callers; a psychologist and a social worker who sat with mothers and children; a lawyer who explained rights in language close to people’s own; and volunteers who helped with outreach and distribution.

This was the Centre’s first experience in emergency response, and the team had received no prior training on working in wartime. What it brought was its previous experience in humanitarian work with other organizations, and a belief that the human being comes first. And so a first experience became numbers we read today, and faces that remind us that someone was there.

“Stronger Together” is not only a campaign title. It is what actually happened, families who held on, a team that did not step back, and partners who extended another hand.

To read the full report, click here.