Humanitarian Groups Seeking Further International Aid for Refugees in Lebanon

The international humanitarian community is seeking to establish a new program to aid Lebanon, which is hosting Syrian and Palestinian refugees, to share the burden of the displaced.

Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas told al-Akhbar newspaper published on Friday that “the concerned international organizations will urge donor countries to share the burden of Syrian and Palestinian refugees with Lebanon.

The international humanitarian community is comprised of the U.N. agencies and their international NGO partners.

“The program will allocate 2.16 billion dollars to aid 2.2 million people, half of them Lebanese, and the remaining are Syrians and Palestinians,” Derbas added.

Lebanon currently hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees, including Palestinians from Syria, the highest number at 38 percent of Syrian refugees fleeing the war-torn country for other countries in the region.

The Lebanese government said in October it would ask the U.N. to stop registering refugees who enter the country from war-torn Syria, formalizing a decision to all but close its borders to them.

According to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), there are between 350,000 and 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, most of them living in 12 camps.

The refugees crisis in Lebanon is an enormous strain for a country with a population of just four million.

The influx has tested overstretched infrastructure and created fresh tensions.

H.K.

G.K.