The highest dependency ratio among Palestinian refugees was found in Gaza at 71.1, which 277 Ibid. Middle East Monitor, ‘60% of Palestine refugees in Lebanon now unemployed, activist says’ (Middle East Monitor, 8 October 2021) <https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211008-60-of-palestine-refugees-in-lebanon-nowunemployed-activist-says/> accessed 3 October 2022. 279 Najdeh Association, Development Action Without Borders (Naba'a) and others, ‘UPR 2020: Palestinian Refugee Rights in Lebanon’ (2020) <https://uprdoc.ohchr.org/uprweb/downloadfile.aspx?filename=8181&file=EnglishTra nslation> accessed 3 October 2022. 280 BADIL, ‘BADIL's Position Paper: Stop the Ongoing Discrimination against Palestinians Refugees in Lebanon’ (2019) <https://www.badil.org/cached_uploads/view/2021/04/20/lebanon-pal-ref-rights-1618905391.pdf> accessed 3 October 2022. 281 Samih Eloubeidi and Tina Kempin Reuter, ‘Restricting access to employment as a human rights violation: a case study of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon’ (2022) The International Journal of Human Rights <https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13642987.2022.2059657>; Nada Al-Nashif and Samir El-Khoury, Palestinian Employment in Lebanon – Facts & Challenges: Labor Force Survey Among Palestinian Refugees Living in Camps and Gathering in Lebanon (International Labour Organization 2012) <https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---arabstates/---ro-beirut/documents/ publication/wcms_236502.pdf> accessed 3 October 2022. 282 UNRWA, ‘Protection Brief: Palestine Refugees Living in Lebanon’ (2017) [hereinafter UNRWA-Lebanon, Protection Brief 2017] <https://unrwa.org/sites/default/files/lebanon_protection_brief_october_2017.pdf> accessed 3 October 2022. 283 Ibid. 284 LPDC, ‘Palestinian Refugee Rights: Social Security’ (LPDC, 2022) <https://lpdc.gov.lb/rights/social-security/> accessed 3 October 2022. 278 57 Chapter Unemployment among Palestinian refugees is directly related to the restrictive living and working conditions that Palestinians face in Lebanon.280 As Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (PRL) are classified as foreigners, they are barred from working in at least 19 different professions, including medicine and law.281 In 2015, UNRWA noted that 36 percent of Palestinians were employed in elementary occupations such as agriculture and cleaning.282 Moreover, only 14 percent Students at the UNRWA Wadi Seer Training Centre in Amman, of the PRL hold a written employment Jordan, 2019 (©UNRWA) contract.283 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are also excluded from the sickness, maternity and family allowances allocated to Lebanese national citizens, despite the fact that they contribute the full 23.5 percent of their wages to the National Social Security Fund.284 All of these factors exacerbate the already unstable working conditions for PRL. 2 that made up the labor force, 18.4 percent of them were unemployed.277 Although there have not been any more recent studies focusing on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, it is likely that the unemployment rate has further increased over the past few years due to the dismal economic crisis in Lebanon, compounded by COVID-19, political unrest, and the currency’s depreciation. Some sources have estimated that the unemployment rate in Palestinian camps reached 60 percent,278 while others have placed the rate as high as 80 percent.279