Returning and Rebuilding After the War

Start with your municipality and the Union of Tyre Municipalities, which covers the village — they are the local record of who has been hit. War-damage assessments in the south are carried out by Lebanese Army engineering teams, and the Council of the South also sends engineers to inspect damaged homes.

Keep your own evidence too: dated photographs of the damage, your ownership or residence papers, and any assessment reference you are given. There is not yet a single national website where an individual files a claim, so a clear local record matters.

Money has been set aside, but as of mid-2026 there is no open national process through which an individual homeowner applies and receives rebuilding compensation. In the 2026 state budget, Parliament moved about $90 million from the emergency reserve — roughly $67 million to the Council of the South and $24 million to the Higher Relief Commission — toward southern relief and reconstruction.

The documented chain is: the Army assesses the damage, the Higher Relief Commission distributes compensation, and the Council of Ministers signs it off. In practice this has been slow, and much of it remains a commitment on paper. The honest position today is to register your damage locally and through the Council of the South, and watch for a formal application window to open.

The Council of the South (Majlis al-Janoub) is the government body responsible for the south: compensation for war victims, help for the displaced, and rebuilding infrastructure. Its engineers inspect damaged homes, and it is one of the two bodies the 2026 budget money was directed to.

You can reach it on 01 821 280, or through its website, councilforsouth.gov.lb.

In June 2025 the World Bank approved a $250 million project — the first part of a larger framework — to help Lebanon recover from the war. It is run by the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR).

It is important to understand what it does and does not cover: it funds public works — clearing rubble, making unsafe buildings safe, and repairing roads, water, power, schools and clinics. It does not pay individual families to rebuild private homes, and there is no way for a homeowner to apply to it directly. It is about putting the village's shared services back, not personal compensation.

You are not imagining it, and you are not alone in being frustrated. Across the south, residents and business owners have held sit-ins over how slow the compensation has been. The funds are real but the system to deliver them to individual homes is not fully running, and the scale of the damage is enormous — across South Lebanon the war destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes.

This guide will be updated as the official process becomes clearer. In the meantime, keeping your damage documented and registered is the most useful thing within your control.

Be careful. After the war, unexploded shells and cluster munitions remain in fields, rubble and along roads across the south, and they can still kill or maim long after the fighting stops.

If you see anything suspicious — a strange metal object, something that looks like a small canister or a shell, anything you do not recognise — do not touch it, do not move it, do not kick it, and keep children well away. Move back the way you came, and call the Civil Defense on 125 or the Lebanese Army on 1701 to report it. Never try to move or defuse it yourself. Clearing it is the job of trained teams.

The most reliable points are your municipality and the Union of Tyre Municipalities (uotm.gov.lb), and the Council of the South (councilforsouth.gov.lb) for compensation and reconstruction news. Be wary of unofficial pages promising payments or asking for fees — the official bodies above do not charge you to register damage.