Human Rights Watch, 'Cut Off From Life Itself': Lebanon's Failure on the Right to Electricity, March 2023, 189 pages
Source ID
SRC-329
Citation
Human Rights Watch, 'Cut Off From Life Itself': Lebanon's Failure on the Right to Electricity, March 2023, 189 pages
URL or path
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/03/09/cut-life-itself/lebanons-failure-right-electricity; full report PDF https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2023/03/lebanon0323web.pdf; research/SRC-I1_HRW_Cut_Off_From_Life_Itself_full.pdf; appendices at research/SRC-I1_HRW_appendices.pdf; text at research/SRC-I1_HRW_Cut_Off_From_Life_Itself_full.txt
Type
Non-governmental organisation report on named primary survey research
Hierarchy tier
3
Published
2023-03-09
Accessed
2026-08-22
Snapshot
Full report PDF and appendices archived 22 August 2026, 189 pages, full text layer
The register keeps changing after the book is fixed in print. Each entry below was added to this row in the order shown.
RETRIEVED AND READ AT ITS SURVEY AND FINANCE PASSAGES, 22 AUGUST 2026, retrieval I1 of the Chapter 8 gate. 189 pages. The source manuscript cites it at line 1887 and 1891 and it had no register row. THE SURVEY, AND ITS METHOD IS BETTER THAN THE MANUSCRIPT STATES: Human Rights Watch 'partnered with a local firm, the Consultation and Research Institute (CRI), to administer a household survey to a representative sample of 1,209 Lebanese households who had been living in the same home since 2019', between November 2021 and January 2022, with a margin of error 'estimated at plus or minus 2.82 percent for an observed frequency of 50 percent at a level of confidence of 95 percent', on 56 questions. Surveyors approached 1,887 households, completed 1,219, and 1,209 met the residence criterion. THE SAMPLING FRAME EXCLUDES Palestinian camps and formal and informal Syrian refugee camps, 'which receive electricity from private generators provided by UN agencies', and non-permanent residents and second homes. ANY USE OF THE 1,209 FIGURE CARRIES THAT EXCLUSION, because a Syrian chapter citing a Lebanese survey that excludes Syrian refugee camps must say so. THE DISTRIBUTIONAL FINDING IS CONFIRMED AND THE MANUSCRIPT OMITS ITS MIDDLE TERM. Verbatim: 'We found that the average household had generator bills that accounted for 44 percent of monthly income (median = 35 percent). The disparities between income levels are huge. For those in the bottom quintile who accessed a generator, their generator bills consumed 88 percent of their monthly income, on average, compared to 21 percent for the top quintile.' The manuscript prints 88 and 21 and not the 44 per cent average or the 35 per cent median. The average is the stronger figure for a chapter about affordability, because it describes the typical household rather than the tails. A SECOND FIGURE THE MANUSCRIPT DOES NOT CARRY AND SHOULD: 'The average Lebanese household estimated that they go about 9 hours per day with no electricity at all from any source.' That is the honest comparator for Syria's two-to-four hours of supply, because it counts what people had rather than what one supplier delivered. THE THREE BILLION IS THE REPORT'S OWN SECTION HEADING, 'A $3 Billion Industry', and the deficit figure is attributed: 'Finance Ministry and Energy Ministry figures show that EDL ran a deficit of between $1.5 to $2 billion per year over the last 10 years.' So the manuscript's characterisation is right and the attribution can now be given. THE PUBLIC-FINANCE FRAME, WHICH THE MANUSCRIPT OMITS ENTIRELY AND WHICH IS THE MOST TRANSFERABLE PART: 'The World Bank estimates that annual budgetary transfers to EDL averaged 3.8 percent of Lebanon's gross domestic product (GDP) over the last decade, amounting to almost half of the overall fiscal deficit. Between 1992 and 2018, transfers to EDL contributed to over $40 billion of the country's public debt.' AND THE LOSS BREAKDOWN, WHICH IS THE LEBANESE VERSION OF THE SYRIAN PROBLEM AT SRC-324: technical 'losses reaching 16.5 percent in 2018'; 'non-technical losses from electricity theft and illegal connections in 2018 stood at around 21 percent'; and 'around 5 percent of bills are not collected', which the Bank notes is likely understated because it excludes state institutions and refugee camps. THREE SEPARATE LOSS AND COLLECTION FIGURES, EACH DEFINED. That is what a defined loss statistic looks like, and it is the standard against which Syria's undefined 32 per cent should be read. STATUS READ_IN_PART: the summary, the survey methodology, the affordability findings and the electricity-sector finance passages are read. The rights framework, the recommendations, the renewable-energy chapter and the 1,636 kB appendices are not.