The core argument of this chapter is that the paradigm of state weakness has been crucial to the legitimisation of foreign humanitarian interventions in Lebanon, from the Syrian ‘refugee crisis’ to the response to the economic crisis started in 2019. I explore how foreign actors, in particular UN agencies, have promoted an essentialised vision of Lebanon and its capacity limitations, with the use of political labels centred around narratives of state absence and fragmentation. In Lebanon, international funding circumvents the host government, a highly unusual configuration in the humanitarian landscape. The motive invoked to justify this policy is the lack of local governance structures and pervasive corruption. After a brief outline of the UNHCR’s history, the chapter shows that the agency has assumed full sovereign responsibilities by establishing a ‘protection space’ for refugees, particularly concerning registration, vulnerability assessment and social welfare systems (cash-transfer programmes, health and educational projects, etc.). This distinguishes Lebanon from most UNHCR’s countries of interventions, where the agency seeks to strengthen the host state’s asylum bureaucracy and assistance capacities. The agency has legitimised its action through the promotion of its expertise, depicting itself as a neutral and pragmatic manager of the presence of refugees. Yet, in practice, it has strongly relied on a network of national non-state actors for project implementation (whose role is symptomatic of the resignation of the state).