This paper explores the ways in which humanitarian practice changes social space through case studies of Beirut’s southern suburbs (Dahiye) in response to 2006 July war, and the Syrian refugee influx in Lebanon from war in Syria during 2011-2014. Through the investigation of humanitarian practices, it identifies a Lebanese refugee regime in which short-term displacement of the Lebanese population exists alongside long-term refugehood of Iraq, Palestinian and Sudanese refugees in Lebanon. Official states of emergency in Lebanon cyclically stimulate the flow of greater amounts of resources to local citizens through the increasing internationalisation of local welfare. Consequently, the paper also investigates how humanitarian practice becomes articulated with forms of welfare and development. Rather than getting deeper into the technical analysis of humanitarian policies and programs that have gradually turned into development projects, in-depth interviews and participant observation have rather aimed to unearth the everyday human experience of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Through the adhocratic emergency management of the war-stricken subjects’ lives, the paper shows how transnational humanitarian interventions have produced different social and political outcomes in Lebanon. In both case studies, international humanitarianism proves to function as an arm of ethical governance which aims to maintain state and regional order, and avoids confronting the human security of refugees, who are seen as a political problem. As a result, the chronic emergencisation of Lebanese society becomes leverage for preserving international security. The humanitarian strategy of continuously preventing further catastrophes and meeting immediate needs, in an environment of political nihilism, consigns the local as well as the refugee communities in Lebanon to an aprioristic abdication of radical social change.