Description
This paper will investigate how CSOs representing marginalised groups have responded to the intense economic and political crises that have enveloped Lebanon and Sri Lanka since 2019. While social protection responses have been broadly inadequate in both countries, migrant women and sexual and gender minorities have been amongst the worst affected groups and have been both marginalised by government and side-lined by protest movements. In both countries, this marginalisation is underpinned by long-standing legacies of economic and political inequalities left by long-running armed conflicts. Marginalised groups have mobilised in new ways in pursuit of social justice. This paper draws on comparative research conducted in Lebanon and Sri Lanka and has three main aims: (1) to explore how these crises have been experienced by some of the most marginalised groups in both societies (with a particular focus on migrant women and sexual and gender minorities), (2) to examine how these groups have responded in the context of a grossly inadequate social protection responses, and (3) to examine how marginalised groups have negotiated relations with wider protest movements.
