BEIRUT — A
UN agency warned Wednesday that more
Palestinians living in crisis-torn Lebanon
have fallen deeper into poverty, spelling a “dramatic humanitarian crisis”.
اضافة اعلان
For three years
Lebanon has been in the throes of one of the worst economic crises in recent
history according to the World Bank — dealing an especially heavy blow to
vulnerable communities including refugees.
Two thirds of
Palestinian refugee families in Lebanon have cut down on the number of daily
meals,
UNRWA Deputy Commissioner General Leni Stenseth told reporters in
Beirut.
Days ago the UN
body “urgently” appealed for $13 million in funding for cash assistance to
families, primary health care services and to keep the agency’s schools open
until the end of this year.
The poverty level
among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has shot up from a little more than 70
percent at the beginning of the year to 93 percent, according to UNRWA.
“This means that
almost everyone is without the ability to cater for the most basic needs in
their lives,” Stenseth said.
“This is a dramatic
humanitarian crisis.”
Lebanon hosts about
210,000 Palestinian refugees, including 30,000 who fled Syria after war erupted
there in 2011, according to the agency.
Around 2 million
Syrian refugees are in Lebanon, authorities said Tuesday, while nearly 830,000
are registered with the UN.
Cholera threat
Most Palestinians in Lebanon live in one of 12 official refugee camps,
often in squalid conditions worsened by the financial meltdown, and face a
variety of legal restrictions including on their employment.
“We know the
infrastructure in Lebanon is depleted ... of course the camps are in no better
state,” Stenseth said.
UNRWA is working on
a prevention campaign to help shield refugees from a cholera outbreak that
struck Lebanon this month, she said.
Cholera has spread
mainly among Lebanon’s
Syrian refugees, and no cases have so far been reported
in Palestinian camps.
“We’ve asked for
funding now to prepare for the situation that has just surfaced linked to
cholera,” she said.
Palestinians were
among more than 100 people who died after a migrant boat that left from
Lebanon’s north sank off Syria last month, in one of the deadliest recent such
shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean.
Economic collapse
has pushed hundreds to attempt perilous sea journeys in the hope of reaching
Europe.
This trend is “also
a risk to Europe,” Stenseth said. “Better to act now and provide us with what
we need,” she said about the agency’s funding, “rather than responding too
late”.
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