BEIRUT: More than 1 million Syrian refugees in crisis-hit Lebanon are experiencing deteriorating conditions that have left nine out of ten of them in extreme poverty, UN agencies warned Wednesday.
The worsening conditions come despite increased assistance for Syrians living in Lebanon, where one in four people is a refugee. Among the Syrians, child marriage and labor is on the rise, while thousands are at risk of eviction.
The yearly report on conditions of Syrians living in Lebanon is produced by the United Nations’ refugee agency, its World Food Program, as well as its children’s agency.
The report said that the cost of an essential food basket has increased more than seven-fold since late 2019 when the financial crisis in Lebanon began to unfold. The subsistence food basket includes only 13 items, such as potatoes, bread, eggs and powdered milk. The UN describes it as the minimum to survive, “not live in dignity.”
Lebanon is experiencing a historic economic crisis that has caused the national currency to crash, losing 90 percent of its value, driving more than 55 percent of the population below the poverty line, and sending prices and unemployment soaring.
The crisis made things much worse for Syrian refugees, many of them already living in temporary housing and with low paying jobs.
Ayaki Ito, UNHCR Representative in Lebanon, warned of long-term consequences, urging stronger support for Lebanon and the refugees. “We cannot fail them now,” he said.
The UN agencies said Syrian children are bearing the brunt. School attendance for children between 6 and 14 years old dropped by 25 percent in 2021 while nearly 30 percent of children in school age have never attended. Thousands of Syrian children are engaged in child labor, and one out of five girls between the age of 15 and 19 were married, a trend that has been present for the last three years.
Syrians have escaped to Lebanon during the early years of the war in Syria which started in 2011. The Lebanese government closed the door for refugees in 2015, saying their numbers have become a burden on its government and infrastructure, but Syrians continued to arrive.
Making matters worse, almost 60 percent of Syrian refugee families are living in dangerous, substandard or overcrowded shelters, up from 50 percent last year.
The report said the increase of average rent is putting many at risk of eviction.
UN says Lebanon’s economic crisis blights Syrian refugees
https://arab.news/mvhr3
UN says Lebanon’s economic crisis blights Syrian refugees
- The worsening conditions come despite increased assistance for Syrians living in Lebanon
- Lebanon is experiencing a historic economic crisis that has caused the national currency to crash
Lebanon PM says IMF wants rescue plan changes as crisis deepens
- “We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said
- “They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive”
DAVOS, Switzerland: The International Monetary Fund has demanded amendments to a draft rescue law aimed at hauling Lebanon out of its worst financial crisis on record and giving depositors access to savings frozen for six years, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said.
The “financial gap” law is part of a series of reform measures required by the IMF in order to access its funding and aims to allocate the losses from Lebanon’s 2019 crash between the state, the central bank, commercial banks and depositors.
Salam told Reuters the IMF wants clearer provisions in the hierarchy of claims, which is a core element of the draft legislation designed to determine how losses are allocated.
“We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said in an interview at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.
“They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive,” Salam added.
In 2022, the government put losses from the financial crisis at about $70 billion, a figure that analysts and economists forecast is now likely to be higher.
Salam stressed that Lebanon is still pushing for a long-delayed IMF program, but warned the clock is ticking as the country has already been placed on a financial ‘grey list’ and risks falling onto the ‘blacklist’ if reforms stall further.
“We want an IMF program and we want to continue our discussions until we get there,” he said, adding: “International pressure is real ... The longer we delay, the more people’s money will evaporate.”
The draft law, which was passed by Salam’s government in December, is under parliamentary review. It aims to give depositors a guaranteed path to recovering their funds, restart bank lending, and end a financial crisis that has left nearly a million accounts frozen and confidence in the system shattered.
The roadmap would repay depositors up to $100,000 over four years, starting with smaller accounts, while launching forensic audits to determine losses and responsibility.
Lebanon’s Finance Minister Yassine Jaber, who is driving the reform push with Salam, told Reuters it was essential to salvage a hollowed-out banking system, and to stop the country from sliding deeper into its cash-only, paralyzed economy.
The aim, Jaber said, is to give depositors clarity after years of uncertainty and to end a system that has crippled Lebanon’s international standing.
He framed the law as part of a broader reckoning: the first time a Lebanese government has confronted a combined collapse of the banking sector, the central bank and the state treasury.
Financial reforms have been repeatedly derailed by political and private vested interests over the last six years and Jaber said the responsibility now lies with lawmakers.
Failure to act, he said, would leave Lebanon trapped in “a deep, dark tunnel” with no way back to a functioning system.
“Lebanon has become a cash economy, and the real question is whether we want to stay on the grey list, or sleepwalk into a blacklist,” Jaber added.
