BEIRUT: The campaign to rebuild the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp has not received any donations in almost six months, and there is no money to pay rent subsidies in 2011 for the camp’s displaced residents.
About 3,400 Palestinian families are receiving the $150 monthly rent subsidy, paid out in quarterly installments by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is managing the reconstruction and relief efforts, said UNRWA project director for the camp, Charles Higgins.
UNRWA faced a similar shortfall at the end of last year, but this year the absence of rent subsidies is more threatening, Higgins added.
“This is where our most pressing crocodile is, closest to the canoe,” he said. “This is a bit of a problem.”
Higgins, however, said he was optimistic that the agency would be able to cobble together the money to cover the evacuees’ rent subsidies.
“I don’t think we’ll be left with nothing, but that doesn’t mean we have anything right now,” he said.
Edward Kattoura, a Palestinian member of the Nahr al-Bared Reconstruction Committee, said UNRWA should in the end be able to scrape together the relatively small amount needed for the quarterly rent subsidies – about $1.5 million. “It is a problem, but it is not a problem that cannot be solved,” he said.
The larger problem, Kattoura said, remains the roughly $250 million outstanding needed to rebuild the camp, which was largely destroyed by more than three months of fighting in mid-2007 between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam militants.
To raise money for the reconstruction, UNRWA and the state are following a fundraising plan of gaining donors’ trust by showing tangible progress on the ground and then pushing for new contributions, said Sateh Arnaout, Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s chief technical adviser and the government official responsible for the camp’s reconstruction.
“First we need to show that the first group of refugees have gone back to the camp,” he said. “We need to show results.
“Once we have refugees starting to go back, I think we will be in a different position once again to ask for funding.”
Donors are still expressing interest in the rebuilding, and Higgins often takes potential donors on tours of the camp, he said. “Sadly, that interest doesn’t have a dollar value attached,” he added.
UNRWA is still receiving donations for the education of the displaced and other such projects, even if donors are not contributing to the reconstruction, Arnaout said.
Many donors have said they want to see UNRWA spend their initial gifts productively before making further contributions, Higgins said.
In general, however, the climate remains grim for securing humanitarian gifts, with the economic crisis unabated and aid budgets shrinking among Western donors, Kattoura said. Furthermore, the floods in Pakistan – a country that stands as a significant security priority for many donor nations – will also represent a challenge for UNRWA endeavors to raise money for Palestinian causes, he added.
On the other hand, with the price of oil still hovering around $80 per barrel, Arab countries in the Gulf should be able to provide far more funding for the rebuilding, Kattoura said. At a June 2007 donor conference to gather contributions for the reconstruction, then-Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates would pay for half of the $432 million total rebuilding tab.
“There is a delay from the Arab Gulf countries” in funding, Kattoura said. “We have to push [them] to secure the funding to complete the reconstruction.” He said UNRWA, the state and the Palestinian leadership should undertake a concerted initiative to press donors.
“There is a delay from the Arab Gulf countries” in funding, Kattoura said. “We have to push [them] to secure the funding to complete the reconstruction.” He said UNRWA, the state and the Palestinian leadership should undertake a concerted initiative to press donors.
In addition to the approximately 3,400 families unsure about next year’s rent subsidies, more than 800 families are living in temporary housing units erected by UNRWA, but those homes amount largely to “substandard or pretty poor living conditions,” Higgins said.
In order to alleviate the plight of the displaced, as well as to obviate the need for rent subsidies and attract more donations, UNRWA wants to get evacuees back into the camp, Higgins said.
More than three years after the end of the conflict, no one has returned to the camp. Progress in the first phase of reconstruction should allow about 100 families to return to the camp at the beginning of next year, Higgins said. Another roughly 200 families should be able to move into rebuilt homes by April, he added.
The camp has been split into eight sectors for the reconstruction, so that the displaced can return to completed sectors as work on others continues. Because of various delays, the first sector should be finished by mid-2011, Higgins said. The original plan called for completion by April 2012, but Higgins said the best-case scenario would see the reconstruction completed in 2013.
The lack of funds has left UNRWA about $12 million short of funds for the third of the eight sectors, the sources said. UNRWA will soon begin the tender process for the roughly three-quarters of the third sector which the agency has money to rebuild, Higgins said.
UNRWA would be ready to begin rebuilding the fourth sector as well by January 2011, but that will have to wait until the agency raises the missing funds for the third sector, and then starts collecting donations for the fourth sector, Higgins said.
From the Palestinians’ perspective, the renovation of Nahr al-Bared would benefit most from a lifting of the army’s requirement that anyone wishing to enter the camp must have a permit, in order to resuscitate the formerly vibrant economic life of the camp, Kattoura said.
Before the conflict, Nahr al-Bared was among the most economically robust of Lebanon’s dozen Palestinian refugee camps, attracting Palestinians and Lebanese to the goods and services available in the camp.
“We can improve the economic situation in the camp if it’s not a military zone anymore,” Kattoura said.
Skepticism about the reconstruction in general persists among the displaced, with rumors still circulating that the army intends to keep the area as a military installation and never allow the evacuees to return, Kattoura said.
“We have doubts, always,” he added. “Our experience as Palestinians in general, in Lebanon or other places, is we don’t trust 100 percent the decision-makers.”
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