The Plight of the Rightless: Mapping and Understanding Statelessness in Tripoli-V1.3 The Context Tripoli: A History of Deprivation The city of Tripoli is known to be the administrative capital of the north and the second largest city of Lebanon. It hosts around 478,504 Lebanese, alongside over 70,000 registered Syrian refugees and another 30,000 Palestinians who arrived a few decades earlier.1 Figure 1-Tripoli Map Despite its important size, Tripoli suffers from high levels of urban vulnerabilities, mainly high poverty and deprivation rates. Adib Nehmeh, former Regional Advisor at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA), states in his research on urban poverty in Tripoli that 57% of Tripolitan households are deprived, while 26% of them are living in extreme deprivation2. His study is based on a multidimensional index that takes into account not only the monetary worth and economic activity of every household, but also the choices available to them, as well as their access to the most basic human rights such as education, health and housing. Overall, poverty seems to be at its worst in the areas of Tebbeneh and Sweiqa, followed by the Old City, Qobbeh, Jabal Mohsen and Mina, with respective household deprivation rates of 87%, 75%, 69% and 63%. The figure below shows the deprivation rates of the remaining neighbourhoods of Tripoli. 1 2 UN-Habitat Lebanon, Tripoli City Profile 2016 (Updated Sep 2017). Adib Nehmeh, Daleel Al Herman Al Hadri, al-Kitāb al-Awal (Beirut: UN-ESCWA, 2010). 13