United Nations officials have called on the international community to lend more help to Lebanon to deal with Syrian refugees who have fled the crisis in their country.
Share It :
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres and the head of the UN Development Program (UNDP), Helen Clark, arrived in the Lebanese town of Deir El Ahmar in the Bekaa Valley on Tuesday to show their support for the refugees and to vow their support for Lebanon, which has taken the largest share of refugees from the conflict in Syria.
They said that not only the refugees should receive assistance, but it must also flow to host communities in neighboring countries to help them cope with the burden.
“The international community is not doing enough for Lebanon,” Guterres said, while visiting a refugee settlement.
“The impact on the daily life of the Lebanese, on their salaries, on their rents, their school system, the health system, the infrastructure, water, electricity: all this requires massive solidarity from the international community and Lebanon has the right to ask the international community to share this burden.”
Guterres further said that "preserving Lebanon's stability is everybody's business."
Meanwhile, Clark noted the two were visiting Lebanon “because we see the very serious development impact that the Syrian crisis is having on Lebanon. We've been working very closely with Mr. Guterres and his agency so that both the refugee needs and those of the host community are met.”
They met with recently arrived refugees from Raqaa in Syria and also visited several UN projects designed to help the local economy and create jobs.
The Bekaa Valley is one of the areas hardest hit by the refugee crisis in the region as around 170 informal tented settlements have been set up there, making it home to more than 410,000 refugees.
Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since 2011. More than 191,000 people have reportedly been killed and millions of others displaced in over three years of conflict in the Arab country.
