Samar Kadi
Ahmad stirred only slightly as he slept in the improvised cot made from a cardboard box his parents received as part of their World Food Program rations.
“He is safe from hunger for now ... as long as I am able to breastfeed him,” said his mother, 30-year-old Yusra. The 4-day-old boy is among 44,000 children born annually to Syrian refugees in Lebanon, babies who are at high risk of malnutrition and growth problems if not fed properly.
Yusra, her husband, and their four other children have been sharing a 20-square-meter tent in the informal camp in Taalabaya in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley ever since they fled fighting in their hometown on the outskirts of Aleppo a year and a half ago.
But although they and some 1.2 million other Syrian refugees no longer face the threat of war, they are threatened by growing food insecurity, an issue that has been thrust into the global spotlight ever since the WFP sounded the alarm over its lack of money.
“On Dec. 1, we were forced to suspend our food assistance briefly, until funds were secured as a result of WFP’s emergency appeal and its social media fundraising campaign, “A Dollar A Lifeline,” under which the public globally could contribute $1 to help feed the refugees,” said Sandy Maroun, WFP’s spokesperson in Lebanon.
“The Syria crisis as a whole is facing severe funding constraints. The refugees and the displaced inside Syria and in neighboring countries will go hungry if they don’t get the food assistance that WFP is providing,” she added.
In Lebanon alone, some 900,000 refugees depend almost entirely on the agency’s food aid, which is jeopardized as international donors showed signs of fatigue more than three and a half years into the protracted crisis.
“The only consistent assistance they [the refugees] have is that of WFP, and they might be losing it, but at least in December they will get the aid,” Maroun said.
After raising $80 million through the emergency campaign, the WFP informed refugees across Lebanon in mid-December that the food aid had been reinstated. Their electronic food vouchers, also known as blue cards, were uploaded with the monthly amount of $30 per family member, money that can be used to buy food from specific contracted local shops.
Stopping the vouchers would have a detrimental impact on children’s health and normal growth, especially among children under 5, warned Dr. Zeroual Azzedine, chief nutritionist at UNICEF Lebanon.
“For children in the first years of their life, nutrition is a matter of survival for the body and mind. If they are not fed properly, their brain’s abilities are affected and this is irreversible damage,” Azzedine said, adding that in emergency situations food security is the first priority.
“By giving them at least the stability of food on the table and keeping them healthy, you make sure they get a good start in life and a chance for a better future,” UNICEF spokesman Salam Abdel-Munem added.
“If they don’t have the basics, then the push for a better start in life will go away and that’s the real danger for many [refugee] children in Lebanon,” Abdel-Munem added.
At least 50 percent of the refugee population in the country is under 18 years old, making the risk of malnutrition much greater.
At least 900 cases have been detected among Syrian refugee children so far this year in camps across the Bekaa Valley, according to the International Orthodox Christian Charity, which runs a program for screening and treating severely malnourished children under 5.
“The figure is not high enough to call for a malnutrition emergency, but we should be ready for it, because we fear that conditions might get worse in case of food cuts or reduction [of aid] for Syrian refugees,” IOCC country representative Linda Berberi said.
“Syrian refugee children under 5 are the most vulnerable and can be quickly affected by undernourishment and poor hygiene, which can be detrimental for their lives if it is not handled rapidly and properly,” she added.
She said IOCC was currently engaged in capacity building with its medical staff in clinics providing primary health care for refugees across Lebanon in order to enable them to better screen for, detect and treat acute cases of malnutrition.
“We are also putting in place a surveillance system under which children under 5 would be closely monitored and followed up over a year after their height and weight had been recorded,” Berberi said.
Malnutrition is just one consequence of food cuts, however.
Such a reduction in aid would likely also lead to an increase in child labor in addition to early marriages for girls as families seek to increase their income and unburden themselves of having too many mouths to feed.
“The bigger the stress of food security is, the more there is early marriages, and more children are pushed to drop out of school to seek work that often endangers their wellbeing and exposes them to abuse and exploitation,” Azzadine said.
Unofficial rough estimates suggest more than 180,000 Syrian children aged between 10 and 14 live and work in the streets or are employed in agriculture and factories to help pay for food and shelter for their families. There are no figures about child marriage in Lebanon, but the trend is widely acknowledged.
“There are hundreds of thousands [of children] doing physically hard jobs and very long hours, but without having proper food, their health risks increase tremendously,” Azzaddine said.
The humanitarian crisis resulting from the Syrian conflict has been described as the worst so far this century, causing the biggest displacement of civilian populations since World War II according to some estimates.
In Lebanon, the influx of refugees has reached the point where they are equal to one quarter of the population, putting enormous strain on the country’s fragile economy and social structure.
Lebanon and the United Nations Monday asked the international community for a record $2.14 billion in funds to finance next year’s refugee response plan, which stipulates support for key government sectors and host communities affected by the influx of Syrian refugees. The response will continue to deliver humanitarian assistance to displaced Syrians and other vulnerable groups, while also expanding plans to invest in Lebanese services and institutions.
Meanwhile, WFP has yet to secure the funds for their food assistance in January.
“We hope that we would not be facing any suspension again, or even reduction of our food assistance in the future,” Maroun said.
“There were deep concerns about how the refugees would cope with the cut, and how they were going to secure food, especially given that we are at the beginning of winter, when people need to consume and burn more calories to stay warm.”
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