Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon
Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon
Jennifer Ibrahim
Jennifer Ibrahim is a Master s candidate at the University of San Diegos Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies. Between 1996 and 2000, she volunteered with the National Institution of Social & Vocational Training. Beit Atfal Assumoud. to work with Palestinian refugee children fmm the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon.
There are presently over 400,000 registered Palestinian refugees residing in 12 official camps and a number of unofficial camps and gatherings throughout Lebanon. These unofficial camps and gatherings were created as a result of displacement during the 1948 war as well as by population growth. The number of registered refugees does not account for the large numbers of unregistered Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon who are not eligible to receive assistance from the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA), the agency formed in 1949 to cater to Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are widely recognized as having the worst living conditions of any of the Palestinian refugee camps. The majority of the reigees residing in Lebanon lack citizenship and have been marginalized from Lebanese society. The Lebanese government has assigned them the legal status of foreigners, which has negatively affected their rights to health care, social services, education and property ownership. As a result, most Palestinian refijgees suffer from abject poverty and unemployment, have little hope for their situation to improve, and are utterly reliant on UNRWA. The Lebanese government's rationale for its refusal to extend citizenship status to the Palestinian refugees living within its borders rests upon the argument that the integration of the Palestinians into Lebanese society would negate their right of return to a future Palestinian state, and would upset the fragile sectarian balance upon which Lebanon's government precariously relies. As the majority of Palestinians who sought refuge were Muslims, their presence in Lebanon a country divided along religious 15.1&2 83
sectarian boundaries with a great deal of tension between Christians and Muslims fueled much political and social turmoil. The Palestinian refugees have been largely blamed for many of Lebanon's ills, and they have been subjected to discrimination, intolerance and even massacres throughout the past 60 years. Thus, the appalling living conditions in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are not simply the result of poor planning by UNRWA, but the consequence of deliberate discrimination on the part ofthe Lebanese government.
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national health care system, and they are prohibited from owning property. This leaves the majority of registered refugees completely dependent on UNRWA and other NGOs.
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Health Care, Property Owtiership, Documentation Lebanon has the highest percentage of Palestinian refugees living in utter absolute poverty among tbose registered witb UNRWA's special hardship program. This program targets refugee families that subsist on the meager food rations provided by UNRWA. Fifty percent of households are living on the equivalent of less than $2 per person per day. This percentage is much higher than tbat in Jordan and Syria, even tbough Lebanon bas tbe highest per-capita national income among the three countries. Since tbey are unable to afford private medical care and are not offered public bealth eare by the Lebanese government, most Palestinian refugees rely on tbe 25 primary health care facilities administered by UNRWA. Child and adult bealth among these refugees is significantly poorer than tbat of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria or tbe Palestinian territories. Similarly, infant, child and maternal mortality rates and the number of refugees suffering from disabilities, mental health problems, malnutrition and chronic illnesses such as hypertension, cancer and diabetes is also much bigher in Lebanon. It is not uncommon for Lebanese hospitals to deny emergency services to Palestinian refugees, even when UNRWA clinics are incapable of treating tbeir specific condition. Palestinian refugees surveyed in Lebanon have reported that the health services tbey receive, specifically from UNRWA, are unacceptable, citing poor bygiene, inadequately trained personnel, and insufficient medical attention. This bas to do witb tbe fact that UNRWA's clinics have a very low doctor-patient ratio; the doctors see around 80 patients per doctor per day. In 2002 tbe national property law in Lebanon was amended, legally barring "non-Lebanese persons, who do not possess citizenship issued by a state recognized by Lebanon, to inherit or buy property" a law tbat obviously targets tbe stateless Palestinians. This law has to do with Lebanon's regulations pertaining to Palestinians becoming formally integrated into Lebanese society. Thus, Palestinian refugees are prohibited from owning property or even passing previously-owned property down to non-immediate family members. In fact, when a Palestinian refugee dies, his/her property becomes the possession of the Lebanese govemment.
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of the population, which has grown four-fold since 1948. Regulationsexist even on bringing building materials into the camps for the purpose of repair, expansion or renovation. Penalties for disregarding this law have included fines, imprisonment and the demolition of the newly built rooms or fioors. The 3,000 to 5,000 Palestinian refugees who are not registered with either UNRWA or the Lebanese govemment face even worse violations of their human rights. They are considered to be illegal residents and lack identity documents, which puts severe restrictions on their freedom of movement because documentation is required at the checkpoints in and out of the camps and around the country. Consequently, many fear they will be arrested upon leaving the camps and cannot work. Lack of documentation also means that having marriages registered by the govemment is extremely difficult. Even if a non-registered refugee marries a registered refugee, the marriage often stays unrecognized and their children cannot be registered. Additionally, they are not eligible to receive educational, medical or social services from UNRWA. According to UNRWA, "all 12 official refugee camps in [Lebanon] suffer from serious problems no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment." The Lebanese civil war left a crumbling infrastmcture that has become extremely unsafe and highly susceptible to structural collapse. Because of restrictions on horizontal building, Palestinian refugees have been forced to build vertically, and the alleyways between buildings have become narrower and darker. Within the alleyways, a hazardous tangled web of exposed electrical wires can be found. The houses are typically built of either concrete blocks or corrugated metal sheets and suffer from numerous indoor environmental problems, including difficult temperature regulation, weak ventilation, mold and dampness. Cracks in walls and ceilings allow for seepage and for cockroaches and other pests to infest the homes. These indoor living conditions are positively correlated with a number of illnesses, including dizziness, headaches, eye and skin irritation, asthma, upper respiratory traet infections and an increase in the incidence of cardiovascular diseases. Housing units are tremendously overcrowded. According to UNRWA, over 210,000 refugees are living in camps designed to provide accommodation to no more than 50,000 persons. Overcrowding is associated with acute respiratory infections, mental health disorders in children and young adults, and household accidents, such as bums and scalding, cuts, falls and other injuries. As a result of the lack of space, there are very few playgrounds and parks for children to play in; most of the time children play in the streets, in alleyways and in damaged and abandoned buildings, 15.1&2 87
which exposes them to a multitude of dangers. Access to piped drinking water, adequate sanitation and electricity is also severely limited. For those who do have running water, sanitation, or both, their water supply is cut off on an almost weekly basis. Piped drinking water is often unsafe because most camps still use a water distribution network that was largely destroyed during the Lebanese civil war, and the damaged, corroded, and contaminated pipes have not been replaced or properly rehabilitated. Although the majority of refugee households have electricity, most experience daily power cuts. The Lebanese government prohibits the connection of the camps' sewage system with those of municipalities close by. This isolation has meant that the camps have been denied the benefits of Lebanon's extensive post-war infrastructure restoration efforts. Thus, in more than half of the Palestinian reftigee households, UNRWA is relied upon as the sole provider of sewage network connection, while 14% of households do not have any sewage connection whatsoever. Open sewers as well as open drainage ditches filled with garbage and stagnant water are commonly found in the refugee camps and gatherings. The Lebanese government does not provide garbage collection in the refugee camps, either and, in most cases, garbage collection services are provided by UNRWA or by the NGOs operating in the camps. However, this collection is infrequent, and one can often find enormous garbage heaps adjacent to the dwellings. Residents often complain about the sewage and garbage smells that pervade the camps. These conditions encourage infestation by disease-transmitting organisms, such as mosquitoes, lice, flies, fieas, mice and rats.
Some recent developments suggest that change is possible. In 2005, a Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee was established with the objective of improving the living conditions ofthe Palestinian refugees. Not much has been achieved so far, save for a slight amendment in 2005 to Lebanon's labor laws pertaining to the Palestinian refugees, allowing those refugees bom in Lebanon to work in some manual and clerical jobs from which they had previously been barred, increasing the number of potential jobs from 20 to 50. Recent clashes between the Lebanese army and the Islamist group Eatah al-lslam in the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp have led to the complete destruction ofthe camp's infrastmcture and water and sewage systems. While this conflict has led to the further displacement of Palestinian refugees and the deaths of Palestinian civilians, it has brought some officials in the Lebanese govemment to the realization that Lebanon's security demands a revision of its discriminatory policies against the Palestinians. This is evidenced by the unprecedented collaboration of the Lebanese govemment in efforts to secure funding for the rebuilding of Nahr el-Bared camp. In September 2007, at a donors' conference in Beirut, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora made an appeal to international donors for $400 million for the rebuilding of Nahr el-Bared, acknowledging that "failing to rebuild Nahr el-Bared will mean catastrophic consequences. We cannot risk chaos and violence in any of Lebanon's 11 other camps. If we fail to rebuild, it will not only be tragic, but the dangers will be limitless. This was a wakc-up call." While the possibility that a complete re-evaluation ofthe discriminatory policies is slim, these recent developments represent a positive change and provide some hope that, in the future, justice will prevail for the Palestinian refugees.
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