Lebanon’s Essential Questions and Requirements in 2023

After experiencing a brief period of relative stability between 2016 and 2019, Lebanon has been faced with a critical situation during the past three and a half years. On the one hand, the country’s economy is witnessing such crises as unprecedented depreciation of the national currency, a three-digit inflation, and expanding poverty and unemployment, and on the other the country lacks a constitutionally elected president and government possessing full powers. As a result of such a situation, Lebanon faces two essential and immediate questions in 2023: First, reconstruction of the executive branch (election of a president and formation of the government), and second, economic reconstruction. Regardless of the aforementioned questions in the short term, Lebanon encounters mega-crises and fundamental challenges including sectarianism, weakness of the state institutions and lack of national consensus over fundamental political issues. Continuation of these problems poses a serious obstacle to the country’s path to sustainable development and lasting stability. This paper seeks to analyze latest conditions in Lebanon and the prospects for the resolution of political and economic crises in the country in 2023.