UN: One in five Lebanon residents Syria refugees

Press TV

As Lebanon is grappling with an influx of Syrian refugees, the latest UN figures highlightes the extent of the crisis. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said one out of five people living in Lebanon are refugees who have fled the conflict in neighboring Syria. Some 30 percent of the Refugees live in substandard shelters. 

Lebanon’s government has refused to set up official camps for the refugees fearing a crisis similar to that of the Palestinian refugees 52 thousand of whom were living in Syria. Many of Syrian refugees are unregistered and undocumented migrants and live in hundreds of unofficial tent settlements on northern and eastern peripheries. 

The figures provided by the UNHCR do not include hundreds of thousands of refugees who are not registered. But estimates show that there could be over one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon living in tents like these. Some, 280,000 are children of school age, and over 70% very much dependent on any humanitarian aid they can get. 

The greatest suffering in the camps is seen in the eyes of the children. This boy was eager to go on television hoping that our presence would attract humanitarian aid. The women complain about how they’re not getting enough help for their children: This man was a school teacher in Syria’s Hama. Now he’s trying to help create an educational center for children of school age, many of whom have not received any education for two years: Lebanon currently hosts the highest number of refugees from Syria. More than a million other Syrians have fled to Jordan and Turkey. 

The United Nations has warned that the number of Syrian refugees will almost double over the next year to top four million.