By
Emma Gatten, Olivia Alabaster
TRIPOLI/BEIRUT:
When 16-year-old Farah fled to Lebanon from her hometown of Hama with her
husband and 1-month-old daughter after five straight days of shelling, she had
few possessions and nowhere to go. Heading for the town of Beddawi, outside
Tripoli, she expected to find help there for shelter and provisions.
But
that wasn’t immediately forthcoming. The family stayed for a couple of nights
with a local woman (“May God protect her”), before Farah heard about an empty
storage unit being rented out nearby.
“My
husband took some money from someone and he’ll repay them once he finds a job,”
she says of how they intended to pay for the 4x6-meter room, which is
unfurnished save for a dingy toilet and shower room, and is being shared with
another family of four.
Beyond
that, Farah didn’t know how she would pay for what her family needed. The
family spent the first two nights sleeping on the floor.
But
Farah was fortunate in that her situation was brought to the attention of Diana
(who requested that her last name not be used), a Syrian studying at a Lebanese
university, who for the past six months has been working with around six others
to raise private donations from friends and family to distribute aid to those
Syrian refugees who have fallen through the cracks of local and international
NGOs, or government relief.
“It
started getting really bad in Homs ... I had cousins that were killed. I wanted
to go there and help, but I couldn’t leave because of my studies,” she says of
her decision to begin helping out. “I started asking who helps out, but I
didn’t really get any kind of response, and it wasn’t at all clear. So it
seemed that I would have to do something by myself.”
Every
month Diana buys 100-200 mattresses, as well as diapers, baby milk and
clothing, which she then distributes to new families arriving in north Lebanon.
She also pays the rent on numerous other storage facilities, almost always
occupied by more than one family.
Despite
the presence of dozens of NGOs, as well as the government’s Higher Relief
Committee, there are still many gaps in aid provisions for the thousands of
refugees who have fled the violence in Syria.
These
are the gaps that Diana seeks to help fill.
She
also works in conjunction with the Syrian NGO Watan, distributing their aid,
but the money she earns from private donations is not channeled to any other
organization, and goes toward provisions that other charities do not or haven’t
been able to provide.
Last
week saw a huge spike in refugee numbers amid heavy fighting that reached
Damascus, with up to 30,000 crossing the Masnaa border in 48 hours alone,
doubling the official number of registered refugees. Activists and local NGOs
suggested the real number could be three times that.
Many
of the newest arrivals are by and large better off than the refugees who
preceded them, and have moved on to Beirut or other cities and towns. Still,
the latest influx will nonetheless strain already-stretched NGOs and charities,
especially coming as it did just a week after the HRC announced it would no
longer fund secondary medical care.
European
Union officials warned Thursday that significantly more funds would be needed
to keep up with the drastically increasing number of refugees across the
region.
In
Lebanon, one of the biggest problems that organizations face is the
identification of refugees.
Lebanon
has not ratified the 1950 U.N. Convention on Refugees, meaning displaced
people, whether or not they were fleeing violence, are not defined as such.
Andras
Beszterczey, Middle East program director for Mercy Corps., another NGO active
in the Bekaa, says this factor makes the situation in Lebanon, as compared to
other host nations Jordan and Turkey, “much more complex.”
Syrians
fleeing the violence are also scattered across Lebanon, making it hard for
organizations to know how to reach them. Plus, given Lebanon’s political ties
to Syria, refugees are also often scared to make themselves known, and
mistrustful of organizations, a fact Diana feels makes it easier for her to
reach them as an individual.
“They
usually show IDs to us because when we go to them we tell them ‘we’re Syrians,
we’re not part of any organization, we’re working independently,’” she says.
Provision
is patchy and disorganized, with many NGOs and activists reporting that they
see little attention for refugees from other organizations.
But
with the increased media attention that the latest influx has brought, there
has also been a growth in grassroots campaigns to raise funds for refugees,
attempting to offer an apolitical, secular alternative.
One
such campaign, AidSyria, was established just last week. Coordinated through
social media, the organizers hope to start distribution as early as Monday, and
already have around 1,000 volunteers, from across Lebanon, signed up to help.
“The
first thing we always focus on is the humanitarian element of this campaign
only ... there is no politics,” says Rana Farhat, one of the organizers behind
AidSyria. “Of course everyone has the right to have their own political
opinions,” but there is no space for them in the campaign.
This
latest refugee surge echoes, almost to the day, the passage of Lebanese fleeing
the 2006 war, but in the opposite direction. The national experience of war
puts the Lebanese in a position to understand the situation, says Rima Tanani,
another organizer.
“The
Lebanese have passed through these crises many times before,” she says. “I
noticed that there are many Syrians here and they are not getting enough help,
not from the government or from any other committees.”
As
Farhat adds, “There are so many people who have come to us and said, ‘Hey,
those people helped us when we were in need so we need to pay them back. And we
can’t now turn our backs on them.’”
AidSyria
is currently conducting field research and creating a database of volunteers,
to see what aid gaps exist, and what can feasibly be delivered and where.
One
key aim is to help families find shelter: If they can afford to rent, this will
mean helping locate apartments, or if not, people are being asked to volunteer
to become host families.
They
are also gathering food, clothes and baby milk to distribute to displaced
families, and hope to put on entertainment for children.
They
are also looking to provide medicines, an area where other organizations have
struggled, particularly with ongoing care. It’s a problem Diana, too, has seen.
Though she is able to fund any medicines she needs in bulk via a family
connection, she also aims to provide one-off treatments that other
organizations cannot afford, which could strain her small budget.
Many
doctors have come forward as volunteers, willing to help in AidSyria’s
campaign. Farhat and Tanani, along with Imad Bazzi, an activist, are also
communicating with aid experts, many of whom have experience in Lebanon in
2006, and in Somalia.
“I
have personally heard a lot of stories about hospitals refusing to receive any
refugees,” Farhat says. “Obviously this is unfair: We never heard stories about
Lebanese being turned away in Syria in 2006.”
(Some names in this article
have been changed.)
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2012/Jul-27/182191-refugee-influx-prompts-solo-relief-work.ashx#axzz21nkjCWVH
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