Lebanon is located in the Levant, on the eastern most part of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus is west across the Mediterranean Sea. Lebanon's Mediterranean shoreline extends 210 km from north to south; its greatest width from West to East is 85 km. At just 10,452 km2, the total population of the country was estimated at 4.6 million in 2018, with an annual population growth rate of about 1%. Lebanon's location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland facilitated its rich history and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity.

Lebanon is currently hosting around 1.5 million Syrian refugees, including 1.017 million registered as refugees with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as well as 31,500 Palestinian refugees from Syria, 35,000 Lebanese returnees, and a pre-existing population of more than 277,985 Palestine Refugees in Lebanon. This means that Lebanon has the highest per- capita concentration of refugees worldwide, where one in four persons is a refugee. At US$11,408.8 per capita income in 2017 Lebanon is classified as an upper middle-income country. It was ranked 76 out of 188 in the HDI in the UNDP 2016 Human Development Report.