Apr 4, 2024
Lebanon: Bursting at the Seams While Refugee Aid Dwindles
In less than 24 hours, four Lebanese Ministers on four different occasions talked about the disaster that is the Syrian refugees. One of them called for declaring a state of emergency.
You can blame them all you want. You can say they're using Syrians as scapegoats, which is partly correct. But the disaster is real and requires immediate action.
Lebanon continues to host the largest number of refugees, per capita and per square kilometer, in the world. With over 1 million Syrians and a struggling economy, a solution is more urgent than ever.
To make matters worse, while the number of Syrians is on the rise, humanitarian aid to Lebanon is declining.
With rising xenophobia and discrimination against them, Syrians surely would rather go home. The only way to achieve that is by forging a fair and stable political settlement to the Syrian conflict. In the meantime, aid to Lebanon has to increase or the ramifications will be serious.