Case Study March 2014 Lebanon Country Programme

“Even if the conflict ends today and we can go home, we will need to start from scratch all over again. We have nothing. All we have left are our children. They are the only reason we wake up

every day and try to cope with this horrible reality.”

                                                           Born  in  Lebanon:  Hiba  (7  years  old)  holding  her  18  month  old  sister  Raya.    Picture  Ahmad  Baroudi  /  Save  the  Children  

 

Huda and her family came from a wealthy Syrian family and felt very fortunate. Huda describes her old life as one where all the pieces came together perfectly. Before the war, she and her family used to visit Lebanon as tourists, sunning themselves on the beaches near Tripoli. Now they live in a makeshift shelter in an informal settlement in Central Bekaa without access to even the most basic services like clean water, electricity and sanitation. Two years ago they were forced to flee their home when Huda was pregnant with Raya, who was born a refugee in Lebanon. The conflict in Syria destroyed all of their lives and all of their possessions; Huda and her family fled in their pajamas, leaving everything behind.

Huda’s story in her own words My husband and I lived in a very nice house. I come from a wealthy family and so does my husband. He worked in industry and was doing well. We had a lovely grand house, with marble floors and a big crystal chandelier in the living room. We even had a limestone bathtub and had spared no expense. We had decided not to have too many children, in order to give them the sort of life we wanted for them. Each of their bedrooms was so charming. Every wall was painted in a different colour and the ceiling was made to look like a sky with glowing stars which lit up at night for them. Everyone would want the sort of life we used to have. Recently, when we were at the UNHCR registration centre, I didn’t know what to say when we were asked if we had been to Lebanon before. It’s strange, as we used to come here every summer, but on holiday as tourists! When I think back to those summer days on the beach in Tripoli, I feel like I can’t breathe anymore.

The whole family was encouraging my little son Ubada to grow up to be an engineer to help his father and work for the family business one day. Ubada is smart and hardworking; he could have been a great engineer. But now all those dreams are gone, the business is gone and we have nothing left. Hiba was the little princess of the family, everyone spoilt her rotten and she would be given so many presents all the time. She was such a bundle of joy and lit up the house. Now, everything has changed and my little princess seems to have suddenly aged overnight. I was six months pregnant with Raya when we started to hear rumours about the detention of young men and increased violence in the towns around us. My husband was frightened and so hid with friends in another village. As we’d feared, the violence then spread to our area and we came under heavy shelling and artillery fire, which lasted for about 16 hours before we finally managed to escape. I couldn’t take anything with me, I couldn’t even change out of my pajamas. I came to the hiding place where my husband was and we stayed there for a few days. We then fled to Lebanon. We rented a house in Lebanon, assuming we would only need to be here for a short time. However, we soon learnt that our house had been destroyed. The money for the rent has been borrowed from friends and we knew that we were on borrowed time. The homes and business of my family, and of my husband’s family were also all destroyed. The whole family had lost everything – our shops, our houses, farms, workshops, cars, everything was gone. In the end, we had to realize that we were completely broke in a foreign country, with nowhere to live and no one to help us. We had to make the difficult decision to move into a tent in the informal settlement as our new home. Life in a settlement is really hard as we don’t even have the most basic of things here, like running water. There are insects everywhere and diseases are rife. There is no sewage system and it’s a really unclean and dangerous environment for children to live in. A few months ago, during the snow storms, Ubaba fell and broke his arm. We took him to the hospital and he had to have surgery. This cost $600, which we don’t have so we now also owe this along with all our other debts. Even if the conflict ends today and we can go home, we will need to start from scratch all over again. We have nothing. All we have left are our children. They are the only reason we wake up every day and try to cope with this horrible reality. Context and background For three years the conflict in Syria has devastated the lives of millions of Syrians and triggered the biggest exodus of refugees in recent history. There are an estimated 9.3 million people inside Syria in need of assistance and 2.5 million people have fled to neighbouring countries.

Since the start of the crisis more than a million Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon, a tiny country with a population of just over 4 million. More than half a million of these refugees are children. An estimated 100,000 are under four years old. Most of these have known little but terror, displacement and deprivation in their short lives. Thousands more were born as refugees in Lebanon; their families uprooted and scattered, their homes and parents’ livelihoods destroyed. Their chances of receiving an education currently stand at 20 per cent. Their chance of living in a makeshift tent or shelter not fit for human habitation is higher than one in four.

As the numbers of refugees in Lebanon continues to increase, the demand on public services like education, health, water, housing, electricity and sewage has reached an unsustainable level.

Having escaped the conflict, the reality of life in Lebanon for many refugees is fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. Most have long since used up any savings and assets they were able to bring with them and families are struggling to cope in an environment where prices are high and opportunities for work, education or training are almost non-existent.

The rental market is now saturated, rents have skyrocketed and most families cannot afford even the most basic accommodation. Increasingly they are looking for makeshift shelter in informal settlements and unfinished buildings, which are now home to more than 250,000 refugees across Lebanon. Conditions in informal settlements are abysmal and provide little protection from the damp and the cold. Most of the settlements lack even the most basic water and sanitation services. Many families have seen themselves fall into significant debt as they try to feed their families.

Save the Children has undergone a massive scale up to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable refugees, delivering an integrated response and providing almost 210,000 beneficiaries with shelter, education, child protection, FSL and health services. We have supported 11,000 families in the run up to winter, by either reinforcing current shelters in informal settlements or providing newly arrived families with a full shelter kit.

Save the Children has been rehabilitating unfinished buildings and providing shelter support to locations across Lebanon since the start of our response. Through our education programmes 40,000 children are able to access some form of schooling, either within schools or in non-formal settings. Our psychosocial support centres give children safe places to play and have fun. For older children we provide life skills building and community engagement opportunities to help ensure refugee and vulnerable Lebanese youth are able to play a proactive role in their

societies. We have provided vulnerable families with cash support, and cash for work interventions as well as non-food items like cooking equipment, mattresses and blankets.

During the winter months we provide additional cash payments to cover the costs of stoves, fuel and winter clothing. We have also been providing free paediatric and reproductive health consultations and our community health workers carry out door to door visits raising awareness on hygiene issues, malnutrition and key health messages.

Interview carried out by Ahmad Baroudi on March 5th 2014. Edited by Marion McKeone, Media, Advocacy and Communications Director on March 10th 2014.