KNOW NOW:
Lebanon's Own Refugee Crisis
Costs Crush World’s #1 Host
This is Beirut, with its ever-alluring coastline and deep-water ports. Once the Middle East mecca for travelers and traders, today the Mediterranean city leads Lebanon’s campaign to shake off a more recent reputation as war-beaten and high-risk.
Still staggering from its own protracted civil war that ended in 1990, the country’s long been the go-to for survivors and fighters from neighboring conflicts. The trend started a century ago with an influx of Armenians fleeing their homeland. A destination point for Palestinians from their earliest scuttles with Israel and a landing pad for their leaders after Jordan expelled them, the country is now under Shia-Islamicist Hezbollah control. Mound onto that millions of Syrians who have crossed into Lebanon since Assad turned on his people in 2011, and the country earns the dubious distinction as host to the largest refugee population, per capita, worldwide. All this, in a territory the size of the state of Connecticut.
The country has history as a world-class debtor, but it simply can’t bear the current financial pressure. Divided along sectarian lines, government payroll is all about patriarchy and covers ten percent of the entire population, including untold rosters of “ghost workers” who collect income but don’t work. As donor fatigue diminishes global aid for refugees and Lebanon’s treasury scrambles to pay salaries, the country is torn up over possible cuts in military pensions, university funding, critical services. Public patience is wearing thin and street attacks on Syrians are more frequent. The foreign minister, also leader of Parliament’s largest political party, ratchets up popular resentment: he blames refugees for Lebanese job losses and demands they return home.
Transparency International’s watchdogs issued a low rating for Lebanon in 2018 based on violations ranging from election fraud to diverting international aid intended for Syrian refugees. It’s a view broadly shared by Lebanese themselves, who maintain epic distrust of their government. In Gallup’s latest yearly poll here, 95 percent of the respondents said government corruption is endemic.
And the future? Up-and-coming Lebanese talent worry about underemployment and shrinking wages across the spectrum. The surge of refugees accepting lower pay and dangerous working conditions has pushed more citizens into poverty. And almost half of recent Lebanese college grads are jobless. They’re part of a disturbing brain drain of the nation’s youth who want to work as the engineer or accountant they trained to be, not in the waitress or bus driving job they’ve managed to find.
Palestinians in Lebanon face greater challenges, too, as they compete with Syrians for limited resources. The poor are growing poorer, and many are falling from the coveted entrepreneurial middle class into poverty. They call it 'the neglected crisis’: new, steep economic divisions more profound than ethnic, religious, and political differences.
In Beirut, the divide is inescapably visual. Consider the gleaming new downtown area, a welcome relief to those anxious to clean up the post-war eyesore. Former billionaire Prime Minister Rafik Hariri showed characteristic hubris by leading the razing and re-developing of iconic real estate along the harbor. Killed by a car bomb in 2005, he and other investors have erected massive limestone buildings affordable to super rich, mostly Gulf Arabs who buy sprawling addresses and leave them unoccupied. Lined with absentee investments, the streets are empty and quiet, save the construction cranes operating nearby.
To Mark Ghazali, an edgy politics student at the American University of Beirut, it’s a ghost town created by the greedy and corrupt. He spends weekends leading provocative tours of Downtown, the prime seaside area that once throbbed with nightclubs and posh hotels before it was blown up during the civil war. He motions a group past a wall sprayed with "You Stink but you don’t do sh*t” in big, black angry letters. Graffiti artists have been spreading the "You Stink" movement's message since 2015’s trash crisis, when garbage piled high on the streets, dumps were beyond capacity, and the public raged against government incompetence. The crisis spurred a powerful wave of homegrown advocacy for better living standards. Poverty is deeper and wider, of course, but World Bank data crunchers complain their current data is useless given the influx of indigent migrants.
Across the city at the Burj Barajneh Refugee Camp, Palestinian men return from a day’s work. Wearing soiled white shirts with “window cleaner” in large black letters across their backs, they walk through a dusty haze of heat and diesel emissions, passing waist-high piles of trash and industrial refuse. Their home is just beyond the 40-foot-high metal fencing. It’s a place teeming with men in open-air metal works, repair shops, and fruit stands, groups of them walking to mosques, and others gossiping over tea. Children dart in and out of makeshift houses with corrugated metal roofs. Women peer out of windows and from behind curtains. Lebanon is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians like these. Many have integrated into villages and cities over the decades, while others remain in sprawling camps-cum-urban ghettos.
The country won’t allow more recent Syrian arrivals this illusion of stability. Earlier this month Lebanese authorities forced them to break down the hard structures they erected to weather the punishing winds and rains. Nothing permanent, the government warns; the Syrians aren’t staying.
DO NOW:
Lebanese are highly mobilized when it comes to community action. The country is loaded with hundreds of local and international NGOs, and many welcome volunteers with expertise to share. Ana Aqraa’, “I read” in Arabic, helps Iraqi and Syrian refugees adapt to Lebanon’s public schools with robust after-class programs and psychosocial support; it also trains teachers to better attend to this vulnerable, under-served and often abused population. Beyond Association works with women and girls, from human trafficking prevention and intervention to winterizing homes and schools. It operates on the ground, building self-esteem through arts, sports, literacy, and more. Looking for a broad-based organization? ANERA is a seasoned and first-rate player in the region’s economic development and well equipped to direct donors, volunteers and professionals on pressing needs. Their field reports detail day-to-day challenges along with scalable solutions.
Bristling against what they're calling discrimination and anything that further impedes their ability to earn a living, Palestinians have been demonstrating this week against Lebanese government requirements that they apply for work permits in order to secure a job.
Palestinians like this octogenarian who fled Jerusalem in 1948, have lived in Lebanon ever since. With Lebanese unemployment high, Palestinian work permits are harder to come by. Sunday morning business is slow for this broom seller, who hawks brushes and dusters, street-side, near the American University of Beirut.