UN plans to cut number of refugees receiving cash aid in Lebanon by a third, citing funding cuts

ABBY SEWELL
Thu, November 2, 2023





 Syrian refugee families walk back into a refugee camp after running errands in the town of Bar Elias, in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, July 7, 2022. Faced with an increasing funding crunch, the United Nations will cut the number of refugee families receiving cash assistance in Lebanon by nearly one-third next year, a spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — Faced with an increasing funding crunch, the United Nations will cut the number of refugee families receiving cash assistance in Lebanon by nearly a third next year, a spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.

Due to “significant funding reductions,” UNHCR and the World Food Program will give monthly cash aid to 88,000 fewer families in 2024 than in 2023, UNHCR spokeswoman Lisa Abou Khaled said.

About 190,000 families will continue receiving the assistance, which is capped at a monthly maximum of $125 per household, she said.

In the past, some families received extra assistance in the winter months for heating fuel expenses, but this year that program will also be halted, Abou Khaled said. That aid “was critical for vulnerable families to survive the winter season,” she said.

Lebanon, which has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis since 2019, hosts some 790,000 registered Syrian refugees and potentially hundreds of thousands more who are unregistered, the highest population of refugees per capita in the world. About 90% of Syrian refugees in the country are living below the extreme poverty line.

Syria’s uprising-turned civil war, now in its 13th year, has killed nearly half a million people, displaced half of its prewar population of 23 million and crippled infrastructure in both government and opposition-held areas.

Recent months have seen a substantial uptick of violence in the largely frozen conflict, but international attention has largely turned away from Syria to the conflict in Ukraine and now to the Israel-Hamas war.

UNHCR's Lebanon office has only received funds to cover 36% of its annual budget so far this year, while at the same time last year it was 50% funded, Abou Khaled said. The office has already cut staff and reduced programs this year and may make further cuts in 2024, she said.

Earlier this year, the U.N. slashed assistance to Syrian refugees in Jordan, also citing funding shortfalls.

Since Lebanon’s economic meltdown began in 2019, officials have increasingly called for a mass return of Syrians, saying they are a burden on the country’s scarce resources and that much of Syria is now safe, while human rights organizations have cited cases of returning refugees being detained and tortured.

Over the past year, the Lebanese army has deported hundreds of Syrians. Many of those were intercepted while entering the country at illegal crossing points, but others were registered refugees who had been living in the country for years.

Lebanon says fires destroy 40,000 olive trees, blames Israeli shelling

Thu, November 2, 2023 

Smoke rises after Israeli shelling , as seen from Lebanese side, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon

By Riham Alkousaa

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Fires caused by Israeli shelling in south Lebanon have burned some 40,000 olive trees and torched hundreds of square km (miles) of land, dealing a serious blow to a major Lebanese crop, the agriculture minister said.

Fires on Lebanon's side of the border have flared daily since the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire last month after war between Israel and Gaza's ruling Palestinian Islamist group Hamas erupted.

"Forty-thousand trees mean 40,000 histories. People are connected to olives spiritually. Our ancestors planted them, and we are losing them today," Agriculture Minister Abbas Hajj Hassan told Reuters.

He accused Israel of starting the fires by using shells containing white phosphorous to destroy wooded areas which Hezbollah fighters - who began firing into Israel in support of Hamas in what has become the worst flare-up of border hostilities since a 2006 war - could use as cover.

The Israeli army denied the accusation and said the types of smoke-screen shell it uses do not contain white phosphorus.

"The smoke-screen shells containing white phosphorus in the (Israeli military) are not intended or used for setting fire, and any claim that these shells are used for that cause is baseless," an army spokesperson said.

Agriculture ministry data showed some 130 fires, in 60 villages and their surroundings, have been recorded during the fighting. "These olives have not been harvested yet, meaning we lost the trees and the season," Hajj Hassan said.

"They are throwing fire," said Dory Farah, a farmer in the border village of Alma Alashaab. "We wouldn't feel so sad if they were two- or three year-old trees. (But) we have olives trees that are 200 years old."

Mohammad el Husseini of the south Lebanon farmers syndicate said the Lebanese government would not be able to compensate farmers for the losses, with the country four years into a devastating financial meltdown.

Lebanon's agriculture ministry asked the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Tuesday for assistance to help affected farmers and in examining the soil to determine the extent of the damage, Hajj Hassan added.

Olive output covers more than 20% of farmland in Lebanon and provides income for more than 110,000 farmers and growers, accounting for 7% of agricultural GDP, according to U.N. data.

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa in Beirut, Emily Rose in Jerusalem; editing by Mark Heinrich)