Palestinian refugees represent one of the world’s largest protracted refugee situations, a sizeable number of whom live in 12 refugee camps in Lebanon. Camps have been described as overcrowded spaces with complex and hybrid forms of law and governance. Previous research has found that camp residents face multiple protection challenges and a high prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV). While IPV is a universal phenomenon, it is shaped by local conditions, cultures, contexts, and intersecting identities of victim-survivors.

This study aims to understand how female Palestinian refugee victim-survivors experience IPV, seek support, and access justice within camps in Lebanon. It builds on previous literature, largely in Western contexts, on IPV, help-seeking behaviour, and access to justice. In the context of Lebanon’s plural legal system, this study is also situated in theoretical perspectives on legal pluralism, as well as hybrid security and justice.

This exploratory study incorporates perspectives of a sample of four Palestinian victim-survivors of IPV and 25 experts. The experts included a civil judge, a judge from the Sunni Court, police officers, a policymaker, lawyers, social workers, NGO employees, and UN personnel, many of whom were Palestinians resident in camps.

Findings suggest that Palestinian refugee victim-survivors primarily seek informal support through family members and may reach out to UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) and local Palestinian NGOs for formal support. Specialised services remain restricted and limited within camps. The legal outcome that victim-survivors seek is commonly through religious courts to obtain a divorce and/or child custody. Within camps, the value of domestic violence legislation is diminished by the absence of state law enforcement agencies. The context of encampment, a complex governance system in camps, and the plural state legal system impact victim-survivors experiences of accessing justice.

This is the first study of its kind; it provides thematic insights, theoretical contributions and poses future directions for research. Finally, potential implications on policy and practice relating to support and justice for IPV in Palestinian camps in Lebanon are discussed.