According to thedresswizard, the population of Lebanon is estimated at around 4.4 million residents. There are no official updated data since strong political interests, linked to a system that divides institutional offices and parliamentary seats on a community and confessional basis, have over the years inhibited the opportunity to update the last public census, dated 1932. It is likely., given the higher fertility rate of the Muslim community, that it has grown over the decades much more than the Christian one (more affected also by the phenomenon of emigration) and that today it can represent at least 60% of the total population. If officially ascertained, this percentage could undermine the already precarious balance in representation enshrined in the 1989 Ta’if agreements.
Currently, the most marked difference between the demographic weight and the political one is recorded for the Shiite community, which is entitled to only 21% of the total seats in parliament, although it is estimated that it represents at least one third of the population.
Such a political system, built according to a demo-confessional scheme, naturally feeds clientelism and risks undermining the credibility of those who hold public office: it is no coincidence that Lebanon was ranked 136th out of 177 countries in 2014. transparency and perceived corruption index .
Freedom of expression and religious freedom are guaranteed, as is pluralism in the media: Lebanese civil society is particularly active and records an intense flourishing of associations and non-governmental organizations. Approximately 400,000 Palestinians live in the 12 refugee camps in Lebanon managed by the UNRWA, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees of the Near East. Despite more than sixty years have passed, and now three generations since the Palestinian diaspora of 1948, Palestinians are poorly integrated into Lebanese society: they have never obtained citizenship and suffer from various limitations in access to public services (health and education in the first place.), in labor, civil and property rights. In recent years, after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, however, attention has focused on the arrival of Syrian refugees, more than 1.2 million at the end of 2015, whose flow shows no signs of decreasing.
Their presence has severely tested Lebanese institutions and international agencies are struggling to cope with the influx of refugees into a country of only 4 million residents. The risk of a demographic emergency is real. The presence of about 50,000 Iraqis is also significant, to which must be added other groups of refugees from Sudan and Syria.
The Lebanese population is very young: according to the estimates of the Undpas many as 47% of Lebanese are under the age of 24 and the median age is low, around 29. An imposing diaspora of the population, which began more than 130 years ago, characterized the whole of the twentieth century: it was caused as much by economic reasons, linked to the interests that the flourishing Lebanese commercial networks have built all over the world, as by political ones, linked not only to the two civil wars but also to the continuous internal tensions. It is estimated that the Lebanese of the diaspora and their descendants are about 13 million and have settled mainly in America, mainly in Brazil, Argentina, United States, Canada and Mexico, in some Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. or Kuwait, and in some European countries, such as France and the United Kingdom.
The national education system is one of the best in the region, with high schooling and literacy rates. The secondary and university education systems are also of the first level, fundamental given the large number of skilled workers that the Lebanese economy, which is very oriented towards the tertiary sector, employs.
