International Development Committee
Oral evidence: UK aid for refugee host countries, HC 426
Tuesday 17 January 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 17 January 2023.
Members present: Sarah Champion (Chair); Mr Richard Bacon; Mrs Pauline Latham; Nigel Mills; Navendu Mishra; David Mundell; Kate Osamor; Mr Virendra Sharma.
Questions 46-100
Witnesses
I: HE Rami Mortada, Ambassador of Lebanon to the UK.
II: Najat El Hamri, Regional Director, Middle East, Mines Advisory Group; Hoda Samra Souaiby, Senior Media and Communications Adviser, UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Lebanon; and Suzanne Takkenberg, Country Director, Action Against Hunger Lebanon.
Witness: HE Rami Mortada.
Q46 Chair: Welcome to the International Development Select Committee. This is our third hearing looking at UK aid to refugee host countries, and we have a particular focus in this session on Lebanon. The Committee has previously done a visit to both Jordan and Palestine, and we are looking holistically at long-term refugees. Ambassador, could you please introduce yourself?
Rami Mortada: Thank you for inviting me to give evidence to this inquiry. Let me start by expressing appreciation for the assistance and generosity that the UK has been deploying towards my country in shouldering the burden of assisting Syrian refugees. It is a pleasure to engage with you. As you know, Lebanon is under tremendous pressure, which we will have the opportunity to explain down the road of this session.
Q47 Chair: Thank you. Lebanon has been quite remarkable historically and in recent times in opening its borders and its heart to refugees from a number of countries. Could you tell us a little more about the most recent experience of hosting refugees from Palestine, Syria and other countries in the region, and specifically what support the Lebanese Government and people are providing to those refugees?
Rami Mortada: When the war in Syria started in 2011, we immediately decided to adopt an open borders policy, because we wanted to be on the right side of history. Lebanon and Syria are bordering countries, we have a common history and obviously we belong to the same region, so we could not miss this opportunity to be on their side in these times of hardship.
The open borders policy led to increasing numbers of refugees entering Lebanon, to the extent that we are today the country hosting the biggest number of refugees both per capita and per square kilometre. Of course, since the outset of the crisis, Lebanon has been receiving international assistance, including from the UK, which is much appreciated, but the point we are at today is that the country is at breaking point.
Lebanon represents today a very unique situation in refugee literature. By definition, a refugee crisis is a crisis whereby international assistance helps primarily the refugees and helps some host communities to mitigate the tensions that could exist. That is the classical refugee assistance construct, except that today, because of the unprecedented, multifaceted economic crisis that has been hitting Lebanon since 2019, it is primarily the host communities that are in dire need of assistance in order to help them continue to assist the refugees. Whereas originally, the refugee population is considered vulnerable, today more than 80% of the host communities—of the Lebanese population—are vulnerable and in dire need of assistance.
Q48 Chair: That is an extraordinary figure. What is the population of Lebanon—the host population—and how many refugees have you taken in?
Rami Mortada: For a population of around 4 million in Lebanon, we are hosting 1.5 million Syrian refugees and around another 200,000 Palestinian refugees who have been in Lebanon since 1948. The Syria crisis has also pushed around 35,000 to 40,000 Palestinian refugees into Lebanon. In totality, around half of the population of Lebanon are refugees, which is a considerable burden not only in financial and economic terms. As you know, Lebanon is a country of a very delicate social fabric, so especially in such a protracted crisis—we are 10 or even 11 years into the crisis—you can imagine the tensions that arise with the host communities, and you can imagine also the political uncertainties in the country as to the future of their presence in Lebanon.
Q49 Chair: Did you say that 80% of the host population need humanitarian support?
Rami Mortada: Yes. Today, according to the World Bank, 80% of the Lebanese population is below the poverty line, 34% of whom are under the extreme poverty line. This is what makes this situation so unique. Whereas originally, prior to 2019, the target group of the assistance was obviously the refugees, today the priorities should be recalibrated. That is our challenge with the current philosophy or construct of international assistance towards Lebanon. By definition, humanitarian assistance deals with an emergency, which is the refugee crisis, but when you have a local economy in a country hosting refugees that is in freefall, the rationale of international assistance should be reconsidered or revisited to support the Lebanese economy and help it shoulder the burden that comes with refugees.
Chair: Thank you. Can I pause there and bring in Virendra Sharma?
Q50 Mr Sharma: Your excellency, what are the most pressing challenges facing Lebanon today?
Rami Mortada: It is a perfect storm, as they say. The root causes started adding up years before 2019, and we woke up in 2019 with a huge protest movement, which raised very legitimate concerns about governance and the state of play of the country. That led to bank closures and then a run on the banks. People were deprived of access to their bank accounts and, since then, the Lebanese pound has been in freefall—it has lost 90% of its value. The inflation rate has been above 260% since 2019. It is a comprehensive, holistic crisis.
Access to basic services is practically suspended. Access to essential needs for the population, such as fuel and electricity, is hard to get. There are power outages. What the country needs now is international assistance. We are in negotiations with the IMF to secure a support programme. Besides the economic crisis, however, we are witnessing a political crisis, which in itself has repercussions for the negotiations with the IMF. We need the humanitarian logic of assisting refugees to be coupled with development assistance to help the local economy—the national economy—in order for it to continue being able to assist the refugees.
For the longer term, it is high time to start thinking about sustainable solutions to the refugee crisis. We are 11 years into the crisis without any horizon for a sustainable solution. By definition, a sustainable solution for the refugee crisis should be repatriation to their home country, resettlement or integration—that is in theory. Integration is out of the question for us, however, because of the sensitivities in Lebanon and because we are talking about 40% of the population. No country can assimilate or integrate 40% of its population. As for resettlement, we have all seen the resettlement schemes that are open in different countries, including the UK, but I think that they remain a token of solidarity; they will never present a real solution to the problem.
What remains is repatriation. We should be exploring some openings for guarantees. While always respecting the principle of non-refoulement, we should be exploring some avenues to encourage repatriation to the refugees’ country of origin, Syria, for the sake not only of the host countries—Lebanon, Jordan and others—but of Syria, because soon they will not be able to integrate back into their home country. Repatriation is an urgent need for them and for the host countries.
Q51 Mr Sharma: You touched on many areas when answering the Chair’s question and mine, but there is still the potential to raise a few other areas of concern. How do the challenges that you have touched on—there are others as well—affect your capacity to host refugees?
Rami Mortada: As I said, the country is at breaking point. I will give you an example from one crucial sector, which is education. In 2015—actually, this was under the leadership of the UK as a major donor for the Syria crisis in Lebanon—we put together a programme for educating Syrian refugees, consisting of opening an afternoon shift in public schools. The programme has been going well since then. We had last year around 150,000 Syrian students and around 200,000 Lebanese students. The am shift is reserved for Lebanese students and the pm shift is for Syrian students.
This year, because of the depreciation and diminishment of teachers’ wages, teachers of the morning shift have gone on strike, because their wages do not allow them to commute to school; a teacher today makes around £20 or £25 a month. So the morning shift has stopped. The afternoon shift, for Syrian refugees, was continuing, because the funding was secured, but it started to cause civil strife. Parents said, “There is no way our children remain at home and refugee children go to school.” So the Minister of Education finally decided to shut down both shifts, and today 170,000 Syrian students cannot go to school and 235,000 Lebanese students also cannot go to school.
That is an example of how the economic situation in Lebanon is affecting refugees, and of how diminishing international assistance is affecting them. This programme does not have the proper funding for this year, and the Lebanese Government is desperately looking for a way to secure the school year up until next June, to reopen the schools. It has presented a scheme to the donors; all due diligence was done for the donors to be able to fund it. But until today—I just spoke to the Minister of Education—the schools are still closed and you have around half a million students, both Lebanese and Syrian, who are just at home.
Q52 Chair: When were all the schools closed?
Rami Mortada: Last November. Since then, the students have been out of school. This was a flagship programme when it started. Again, this was under UK leadership and conception; it was really at the forefront of this programme. But then the reduction in ODA and different reasons contributed to the UK backtracking. Other donors stepped in, but today there is donor fatigue, frankly—we need to admit it—and there are new priorities on the global stage, so the Syria crisis is not a priority any more. We have even seen this in the UK. If you look at the 2015 development strategy in the UK, it committed to helping countries hosting Syrian refugees; we haven’t seen that in the updated document, which went out this year. So you feel that there is fatigue.
Chair: I think it is generous to say “fatigue”; it seems more like indifference. What you are telling us is painful.
Q53 Mrs Latham: Clearly, Lebanon is at crisis point. If those children do not get an education, that is a whole wasted generation, not just of refugees but of Lebanese children too. That will devalue the skills they have, because they will not have had the education to get them up to that. It also affects child marriage, because if they have no education, what else are they going to do? Parents are more likely to marry them off. It is causing all sorts of problems for the future.
Clearly the Government have issues in terms of finance, because you have a small population and a huge number of refugees, and you are not even able to deal with your own population because of funding. How have outside pressures and external factors affected Lebanon, and how do they continue to affect it?
Rami Mortada: As you know, we live in a very turmoiled region. I would like to say that Lebanon is somehow a victim of its geography. Although it is a region that is full of potential, unfortunately, even recently, we are witnessing a very turmoiled era. We have been recipients of the repercussions from the Syria crisis, before that the Arab-Israeli conflict, and many other regional dynamics that have been negatively affecting Lebanon. But some of our hardships are, without any doubt, self-inflicted; we should admit that. It is true also that the regional dimension is weighing heavy on the country.
Q54 Mrs Latham: You suffered the port of Beirut explosion. How has that impacted your infrastructure and ability to move about?
Rami Mortada: The horrible Beirut seaport explosion practically ravaged half of Beirut city. Many quarters of the city have not been rebuilt yet because of the difficulties of the economic situation but also insurance. As you can imagine, it is a massive blow. As I said, it is a perfect storm. Everything has been happening since 2019.
Q55 Mr Bacon: Ambassador, thank you for coming. Can you tell us what assistance the Republic of Lebanon has received from the UK and the international community so far, both to support refugees and to support the host community?
Rami Mortada: Since 2012, Lebanon has received around $8 billion, including around $800 million from the UK.
Mr Bacon: That is $8 billion spread over 10 years.
Rami Mortada: Yes. Today, the main document that outlines our appeal is the Lebanon crisis response plan, or LCRP, which asks for $3.2 billion. It has received 30%. That is for 2022-23. The previous LCRP has barely reached 40% of the funding. It became a trend that the received aid never reached the—
Mr Bacon: It was only a proportion of the ask.
Rami Mortada: Yes. Again, the construct of the assistance did not take into account the elephant in the room, which is the economic crisis in Lebanon. Of course assistance is going to host communities, but the bulk of it goes to refugees, with some to some marginal layers of the local population. Today, however, more than 80% of the population are in need of assistance, as I said. Something should be done at the strategic level of the construct of the assistance scheme, because this is a unique situation. I wonder whether we can find a similar situation in modern history.
Q56 Mr Bacon: The FCDO and some other donor organisations have made it a habit to channel aid through municipalities and local civil society organisations, rather than through the national Government. How effective has that been? Does it cause its own problems?
Rami Mortada: Sometimes the NGO-isation of assistance becomes a problem in itself. Of course, we are appreciative of money and of NGOs, both international and local, which are very active in Lebanon. In time, however—we should always remember that we are talking about a protracted crisis; for 10 years, Government institutions have been relatively sidelined, and that causes frustration and further weakness of the state institutions—at some point, the state institutions need to take the mantle and deliver. If we push them aside for more than 10 years, they will lose their muscles, their motivation and the buy-in to participate. That in itself is another problem.
We understand the due diligence needs of the donors, but there is always a way to find some sort of blend of compromise between channelling funds through NGOs and UN agencies and involving Government institutions, which are stakeholders and know the reality on the ground better. Again, that is something that should be considered by now.
Q57 Mr Bacon: I had the great pleasure of visiting Lebanon in the early spring of 2017. Although it was plainly a country under huge pressure—the people we met made that very clear, because of the refugee crisis—it certainly did not feel like a country on the precipice. It felt stable. We had the opportunity to meet some refugees as well, who were being housed in apartments, rather than in refugee camps. You said that 80% of the whole population of Lebanon—of the host community—is now under the poverty line, and that is a big shift since then. What was the number previously, before the crisis?
Rami Mortada: It was about 22%.
Q58 Mr Bacon: What an enormous change! Most of my childhood, as I became politically aware, and all my university years and beyond—from the mid-’70s until 1990—was a period when there was war in Lebanon. There never was not war for 15 years. Now, mercifully, we are in a position where there has been peace for many years, but with pressure all around from what is going on in the region.
You described a comprehensive, holistic crisis; the obvious response to that is a comprehensive, holistic solution. To get a comprehensive, holistic solution, you need the co-operation of all your neighbours—of Syria itself, and of Turkey, Israel, Saudi, Iran and probably Egypt and the GCC states—and of the Russians, the United States and the EU.
When we went to Jordan recently, we were very struck when we were told that, as far as the Jordanians were concerned, having Russian soldiers in the south of Syria, near the Jordanian border, was a good thing, because from their point of view it imposed a degree of order and they could see a difference between the areas where the Russian soldiers were on patrol and in charge and the areas where others—perhaps different versions of groups and warlords—were in charge.
How far away—I know the answer is going to be “quite a long way”—do you think we could possibly be from some sort of comprehensive holistic solution to the problem in Lebanon, which would also be necessarily a comprehensive holistic solution for Syria?
Rami Mortada: I would like to think of it in engineering or architectural terms. Whether you are talking about Lebanon or any other country in the region, stability is a by-product or the fruit of a three-layer approach. You need to start by building your ground floor, which is securing minimal international understandings of the need to work for stability in that particular country. Then you move to your first floor, which is securing some regional buy-in for the stability of that country. Then on top you build a domestic, national floor where you bring all the local stakeholders and guarantee that they have the buy-in for this three-layer approach.
Unfortunately, whatever efforts are being deployed in Lebanon or any other country witnessing turmoil, local efforts remain short of bringing stability, because you would be building your second floor while missing your first and ground floors. There should be some conceptual, strategic plan in order to guarantee the crucial ground floor, and then the first floor brings the different regional stakeholders together, and then that allows for each country to top that up with the domestic floor.
Q59 Chair: Are you seeing any of that happening?
Rami Mortada: There are some signals, but they are still haphazard and sporadic. We are talking about a new culture in the region, which is the culture of multilateralism. These actors do not meet physically. They do not have one single format where they come together to discuss their grievances.
Q60 Chair: Is there anyone who could convene that format?
Rami Mortada: Well, the UK could be at the forefront of such efforts. Stability in the middle east is part and parcel of your stability. You have the intellectual acumen to provide such ideas to the regional actors. One of the flaws of the security architecture in the middle east is that we have been lacking global leadership recently on the middle east—
Mr Bacon: Could you—
Chair: Sorry, Richard; I need to bring David in now.
Q61 David Mundell: You have described the perfect storm, which has brought the current situation about. Do you think there is anything that, if it had been done differently, would have mitigated that? I am thinking in particular of a predictable package of support from the international community at the start of the Syria crisis.
Rami Mortada: The problem with the Syria crisis is that no one ever predicted that it was going to take that long. The original schemes that were designed did not have in mind that we would be talking about a crisis of 10 years-plus, so the responses were more instantaneous and ended up becoming scattered. Not enough proper care was given to the host countries.
In my previous posting in Brussels, they used to ask me, for example, to convey their wish to give the Syrian refugees in Lebanon access to the job market. That was prior to 2019. I used to tell them, “Well, the economy does not generate job opportunities, so what is the use of giving refugees access to fictitious job opportunities that do not exist? You need to invest in the Lebanese economy in order for the economy to start generating jobs, and then both Lebanese and Syrians, wherever the laws permit, would benefit from such a growth in the local economy.”
Sometimes you have a feeling that the international logic is more of a checklist logic, rather than something that deals with the reality on the ground. That is again a reason why Government institutions in the host countries should be taken on board and their voices heard, because they know exactly what the needs are.
Q62 Chair: You do not think that happens currently?
Rami Mortada: Not adequately. I think there is a need for a rethinking of all the strategic pillars of how things are done. The last thing is about the sustainable solution. You are talking about a crisis that has not allowed people to at least hope for a sustainable solution or to hope that refugees will one day return to their home country and that all efforts are being made to explore avenues for that return. Some regions in Syria are starting to be stabilised, so as long as it is voluntary and in full respect of the principle of non-refoulement, I do not see why such openings would not be explored. It contributes to the mitigation of tensions that are growing. It is a very worrying situation—the tensions and the strife that is adding up in Lebanon. People who live in regions of Lebanon that were originally very refugee-friendly will now tell you, “Enough is enough.”
Q63 David Mundell: Would your response be the same if I asked what the UK could do to support Lebanon in helping Palestinian refugees be able to support themselves? There is this wider issue about ensuring that the economy is resuscitated.
Rami Mortada: Yes, I think there is a need for a multi-track approach. Of course, there is humanitarian assistance, which by now should be coupled with development assistance for the reasons I mentioned—mainly because it is a protracted crisis and we cannot keep talking about humanitarian assistance 10 years into a crisis. That is one very important track, but in parallel, I think something should be done on the political track. We are dealing with these crises as if they were an eternal given. We have been assisting Palestinian refugees now since 1948 without any perspective of, or hope for, on the political track, a solution. This is making international assistance even more difficult, because the state of mind of a refugee is also to be taken into account. When a person sees that there is no hope for a solution to the current challenges, it makes assisting him or her even more difficult, because they are less receptive to assistance.
So I think a multi-track approach is needed, but to go back on to Lebanon, I think the lessons—or, as I like to call it, the elephant in the room, which is the 2019 economic meltdown—should be taken into account in redesigning the support scheme.
Q64 David Mundell: Is it practical to resume registering refugees and supporting their access to legal residency and civil documentation, and if it is, is there anything the UK Government can do to help with that?
Rami Mortada: Yes, these are tracks that we are working on in close co-ordination with UNHCR. There were some problems, but I think they are on the right track to be solved. I think both the Lebanese population and the Lebanese Government are committed to their international obligations. We will do our utmost to be compliant and to be refugee-friendly, because it’s a given for us—it’s a neighbouring country. But again, the absence of a sustainable solution—mainly a return to Syria—is weighing a lot on the country.
Q65 Nigel Mills: Your excellency, I think we all wish that refugees could safely go back to Syria and resume their former lives. It’s encouraging that you said there wouldn’t be any people forced to go back. I think it was your Minister Charafeddine who announced you were going to start returning 15,000 refugees a month last summer. Has that policy now changed to being a voluntary one only?
Rami Mortada: That particular Minister’s plan was not adopted by the Council of Ministers and by the Prime Minister, but we had implemented some voluntary local return schemes. We announced, for any Syrian wishing to go back to Syria, General Security would be happy to facilitate the return, and we adopted a sort of vetting with the Syrian authorities, through sending names prior to their return, to make sure that they wouldn’t face problems. We organised a series of repatriation operations. We also put in place a post-return scheme whereby if any of the returnees faced problems, we would be able to know, and the result was very encouraging.
Even with such openings, the numbers remained very limited. We’re talking about 800 refugees who willingly chose to go back, because there is also something that I think, again, is unique: a big part of the refugee population in Lebanon goes back and forth to Syria every weekend. This concept of part-time refugees does not exist elsewhere. If you are a refugee and you decide to visit your country of origin, this is a reason, in international refugee law, to lose your refugee status. I don’t want to say “most of them”, but some of the Syrians in Lebanon avail themselves of the protection of the Syrian Government and they go back and forth every weekend. If you go to the border crossings between Lebanon and Syria on weekends, they are packed.
Q66 Chair: Why doesn’t that invalidate their refugee status?
Rami Mortada: Because UNHCR does not consider that a reason to withdraw their refugee status. That is one of our disagreements with UNHCR: it considers, although they are visiting, that as long as they have not chosen to live in Syria, they will keep their refugee status. What we are saying is that there should be some scheme to alleviate the numbers in Lebanon.
Q67 Chair: Are there benefits in being registered with UNHCR?
Rami Mortada: They get cash cards. A Syrian family gets a little more than $135 a month, which is becoming a pull factor to Lebanon.
Q68 Chair: Is this gossip, or is it documented?
Rami Mortada: Yes, of course. This is the World Food Programme, and it is disbursed through payment cards.
Chair: No, I mean the people going backwards and forwards across the border. Is that hearsay?
Rami Mortada: No, it is documented.
Chair: If you could share documents, that would be helpful.
Q69 Nigel Mills: Do you let the UNHCR monitor the border crossings? I think they used to, then they had to stop. Is that allowed?
Rami Mortada: It stopped, but they have full access to them. I am not specifically sure about the border crossings, but I think they have a presence at some border crossings.
Nigel Mills: If you could confirm that, it would be helpful.
Rami Mortada: I will. As a legal background, maybe it is useful to say that Lebanon is not party to the 1951 Geneva convention for refugees. There are historic reasons why we did not want to join, particularly because of what we ended up falling into, which is becoming a host country for refugees in the region. In the ’50s and ’60s, we did not want to be a destination for political refugees because we thought that that would complicate our relations with fellow Arab countries. I will spare you the whole background, but when the refugee crisis started in 2011, we voluntarily started implementing some of the clauses of the 1951 convention.
Chair: Your excellency, I am going to pause you there, because while it is fascinating, we are well over time.
Q70 Kate Osamor: Thank you, your excellency, for painting a very comprehensive picture for anyone who does not know what is happening in Lebanon. I want to ask you a question about lessons learned. What lessons can the international community learn from the Lebanese experience of hosting displaced people, to inform a strategy? You have explained that the acceptance at the beginning of refugees coming to Lebanon has changed, because of the crisis and the things that have happened globally that have affected local people. How would that strategy look, to ensure that we not only help refugees but also provide for local people? It would be a wide-reaching strategy but one that people can learn from, because the experience for Lebanese people has clearly changed since 2011.
Rami Mortada: One major lesson learned of the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon is that there is no one-size-fits-all, that any development or humanitarian assistance strategy should start with a deep understanding of the situation on the ground and that checklist strategies do not work. On paper, they might seem very appealing, but the reality on the ground could be different. Having said that, I should point out that, compared with other donors, the UK has always adopted a practical, straight-to-the-point approach in its aid to Lebanon. I just mentioned the very successful RACE I and II education programme; the patent is a UK patent—they were behind the conception of it.
The second lesson is that you cannot adopt or follow the same path in year 10 as the one you started with at year zero or year 1. This is very time-sensitive, and humanitarian strategy should continuously be reviewed, taking into account the situation in the host country and the longevity of the crisis.
Q71 Kate Osamor: Thank you. You spoke of 40% of the population that is Syrian.
Rami Mortada: Yes, and Palestinian.
Kate Osamor: What is the average age of this group of people, would you say?
Rami Mortada: I believe that 51% are less than 18.
Q72 Kate Osamor: If this group of young people were sent home or sent back—sent to where their parents were born, should we say—what would happen to Lebanon? What would Lebanon look like?
Rami Mortada: Again, sending them back—
Kate Osamor: I use the phrase loosely. You did not say send anyone back; I am just saying repatriation.
Rami Mortada: When I say “sending them back”, I mean a safe and voluntary repatriation. There are many support schemes currently under way, even inside Syria, and even UK money is being disbursed, notwithstanding the sanctions policy. There is an early recovery stage, or early recovery dimension, inside Syria. I think that merits being further developed and explored, to give them something to return for and to provide livelihood opportunities for them.
As for Lebanon, again for your background, we have always had around 200,000 Syrians working in Lebanon, in job-intensive sectors such as agriculture, development and construction, except that today, these sectors are totally ravaged, so we do not need this labour force. We need a win-win for both us and the Syrians, and that is what is lacking here.
Q73 Mr Bacon: You said earlier that there was no forum where everyone could meet. You have made it sound as if the equivalent of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe—an OSCE, but for the region—would be helpful. But in the absence of that, and in the absence of the co-ordinated, holistic response that is needed, what is the downside? Presumably, it is not a given that things just stay where they are, however bad they are; you could go back to something much worse.
We have seen radicalisation in various theatres in the region that has made things much, much worse: ISIS blew up out of nowhere very, very quickly. You’ve got a number of different parties, both Sunni and Shi’a, who might sponsor radicalisation. How bad could it get, and is it possible that you could end up attracting the world’s attention for all the wrong reasons? If the hints of the discussion that you talked about, but which are not yet co-ordinated, are taking place, what can be done to accelerate those?
Rami Mortada: I think there should be some short-term, mid-term and long-term approaches towards the region.
Chair: Can we have just the very brief headlines of each of those, please?
Rami Mortada: Sure. In the short term, support state institutions in countries like Lebanon. The state is your best hope—and ours, of course.
In the short to mid term, work seriously on the political tracks of these chronic crises that have been weighing on the realities of the region, starting with the Arab-Israeli conflict for more than 70 years, the Syria crisis for 10 years, and other crises. There should be a real, serious conflict resolution effort that has the buy-in of the international community, with other global actors with which you might not be on the best possible terms. There is something called selective engagement: “If we can agree on something with Russia or with others on Syria, then why not try to explore it?”
This is called selective engagement and, prior to the current war against Ukraine, some sort of selective engagement was your official policy with Russia. The situation in the middle east should not fall victim to the total closure of the lines of communication with Russia globally. There is a nice term that I like and that they use in the EU, which is “variable geometry”. If you do not agree on something, you might agree on something else; otherwise, anything that could be done would again remain as if it is your third floor, and your first and ground floor are just totally ravaged or non-existent.
Chair: Ambassador, thank you so much for all your time, and thank you to you as a country for really stepping up. I find it very disappointing that the international community has not only seemingly not stepped up but stepped away from supporting you, the refugees and the host population. Thank you for your time.
Rami Mortada: Thank you.
Chair: You are most welcome to stay for the next session, but I will ask if we can just pause while we bring in the next panel.
Witnesses: Najat El Hamri, Hoda Samra Souaiby and Suzanne Takkenberg.
Q74 Chair: Welcome to our second panel. Can people briefly introduce themselves? Najat, could you start by introducing yourself and your organisation?
Najat El Hamri: Thank you very much for inviting me today. I am Najat El Hamri, the regional director for the middle east at Mines Advisory Group, known as MAG. MAG is currently working in more than 30 countries, supporting communities affected by conflict and instability.
We have been operational in Lebanon since 2001, clearing landmines, cluster munitions and unexploded ordnance, and delivering risk educations for people affected by the conflict for them to be safe, basically. We are also working with the Lebanese armed forces to support the safe storage of ammunition in order to prevent any unplanned explosion and to keep the community safe, basically.
Hoda Samra Souaiby: My name is Hoda Samra Souaiby, and I am the spokesperson for UNRWA in Lebanon as well as the senior media and communications adviser. I have been with the agency for many years. We operate in Lebanon as UNRWA, and we serve Palestine refugees in the 12 Palestine refugee camps, as well as outside Palestine refugee camps. We work basically around education, health, social and relief services, camp infrastructure and improvement, as well as protection services.
The situation currently for Palestine refugees is dire. They were, in the beginning, one of the most underprivileged and vulnerable communities, and they were affected very harshly and severely by the current socioeconomic crisis.
Suzanne Takkenberg: Thank you, Chair, and greetings to all Committee members. My name is Suzanne Takkenberg and I am the country director for Action Against Hunger here in Lebanon. We have been working in Lebanon since 2006 to secure and improve the living conditions of vulnerable Lebanese and refugees, working in the most affected areas. We are concerned with food security, livelihoods, nutrition, and water, sanitation and hygiene issues, and we work in very close co-operation with the Lebanese authorities, our partners and the donor community.
Q75 Chair: Suzanne, what impact has the economic crisis and high levels of inflation had on Syrian and Palestinian refugees, but also on the host community in Lebanon?
Suzanne Takkenberg: First of all, I would like to say—I know it was mentioned by his excellency the ambassador earlier—that the Government and the people of Lebanon have shown remarkable generosity in hosting 1.5 million Syrian refugees in the country for the past 11 years. But since 2019, with the combination of an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, the protracted Syrian refugee crisis, the port explosion in Beirut in 2020, the covid-19 pandemic and, recently, the cholera outbreak, we have seen an exacerbation of vulnerabilities among refugees, the Lebanese and the migrant population here in the country.
The inflation, the currency depreciation and the loss of employment that we have been seeing, especially in the last three years, have negatively impacted the socioeconomic situation for all the different population groups that I have mentioned, who have continued to fall deeper into poverty. According to figures presented by the World Bank in 2020, more than half of the Lebanese population is reported to be under the national poverty line. For the Syrian population, the figures are even more striking, with about 90% of refugee households not able to cover their minimum survival needs and being trapped in poverty.
To give a little bit more detail, as families are becoming increasingly unable to find work, pay rents and meet their basic needs, we are seeing a further reliance on negative coping strategies. To give a couple of examples, these include skipping meals, preferring cheaper and less nutritious food items, child labour, early marriage, stopping education and increasing debt levels. Some 98% of Syrian households, and about 74% of Lebanese households, report using at least one of those harmful coping strategies in 2022. I hope that answers your question.
Chair: It does. Thank you.
Q76 Mr Bacon: How best should the UK target its official development assistance so that it supports refugees and the host community?
Najat El Hamri: I will go first. The UK support has been tremendous over the past years with its funding. As you know, the UK was the main donor for mine action in Lebanon up to March 2021. We know that having access to land is one of the main things both for the host communities and for refugees. With the UK support freeing land from UXO—unexploded ordnance—and cluster munitions, at least 60% of that land has been used for farming and agricultural purposes.
Q77 Chair: Where have those munitions come from?
Najat El Hamri: That is a very good question. As you know, Lebanon has been brought into international conflicts and civil war. Since 2006, at least 4 million cluster munitions have been fired on Lebanon, and at least 1 million of them are still active and unexploded. If you look at the south of Lebanon, 400,000 mines have been laid in 120 km, which makes it difficult for the population to access the land for agricultural purposes. Lebanon used to import its wheat from Ukraine. With the crisis, it could not import more of that wheat, so there is more reliance on the host community and the Syrian refugees having access to the land.
It is not just about accessing the land for agricultural purposes. As you know, Syrian camps are informal settlements, so you have children playing around and still being exposed to the threat of mines. Innocent children tend to find UXO that has not been tampered with, thinking it might be a ball, and they start playing with it until it fires. You know the consequences. So the threat is still there. The UK has given tremendous support.
I want to highlight one point. If you look at the socioeconomic situation of Lebanon, as was kindly shared earlier, Lebanon has made an international commitment, despite being in crisis, to free its country of cluster munitions. There is only 20% of cluster munitions left before it can be free, up to May 2026. The Government of Lebanon has made that international commitment towards the convention on cluster munitions, to free Lebanon of cluster munitions by May 2026: 20% is left.
Q78 Chair: Is it getting international support to do that?
Najat El Hamri: Sorry? What do you mean?
Chair: How is it paid for? To clear the final 20%, is the international community supporting that?
Najat El Hamri: Yes, of course, the international community is supporting that. I want to mention that the support was there—when we were so close to clearing that 20%, the UK was there—but the issue we have now is that the UK is withdrawing funding. There are still some donors supporting, but that means the completion date to clear cluster munitions by 2026 will be pushed again and again, to 2027 or—
Q79 Chair: So the UK has withdrawn its support for clearing mines in Lebanon.
Najat El Hamri: It has been withdrawing the support up to May 2021, unfortunately. We have not got support since then.
Chair: Thank you. Richard, do you want to ask your other questions?
Q80 Mr Bacon: Well, the question stands: what is the best way for the UK to target its ODA? Hoda, do you want to have a go?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: On the funding from the UK, I would definitely invite and call for additional funding from the UK to UNRWA. UNRWA, as you know, has been struggling with severe underfunding for several years now, and that has become chronic. The problem is that this chronic underfunding is having a huge impact on the quality and quantity of UNRWA services to Palestine refugees.
All of that, coupled with the current economic crisis, has put a huge impact on the refugees in Lebanon. The Palestine refugees in Lebanon now are relying exclusively on UNRWA for their survival. The numbers are dreadful. The poverty rate is 93%, so there is almost universal poverty among Palestine refugees. The unemployment rate is skyrocketing. They cannot make ends meet; they cannot put food on the table for their families. The situation is dire. Without additional funding that would help UNRWA come in and increase its support to refugees, the situation is worsening by the day.
Q81 Mr Bacon: Correct me if I am wrong, but you are helping only—I say only, though they obviously need help—refugee communities, not host communities, who, as we heard from the ambassador, are now significantly below the poverty line. It has gone from 20% of the population to over 80%. It is correct that UNRWA does not help those communities; it only helps refugees. That is right, isn’t it?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: Correct. UNRWA’s mandate covers Palestine refugees and their descendants. In Lebanon, we also provide services for the Palestine refugees from Syria. Those are the refugees who were displaced a second time, from Syria into Lebanon. They fall under UNRWA, and their number currently is around 31,000.
Q82 Mr Bacon: I am not doubting anything that UNRWA is doing. Presumably you have been in Lebanon now for 50 or 60 years or more, have you?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: Seventy-five years. We have been established for 75 years. That in itself is a long story.
Q83 Mr Bacon: Suzanne, the question is about how ODA can be best directed to help refugees and host communities.
Chair: We know that your organisation needs money—you all do—but please focus on the bigger picture.
Suzanne Takkenberg: Sure. I will give a bit of background about how the prioritisation is done in country across the different frameworks for the different population groups. There is the Lebanon crisis response plan, which was established to address the impact of the Syria crisis in Lebanon for the international community, mainly targeting Syrian refugees and the host community.
In August 2021, under the leadership of the humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon, the emergency response plan was also developed to complement the LCRP and to provide more exceptional, time-bound and multi-sectoral support and assistance. That is important because each framework is divided up into sectors to establish response plans based on needs assessments and data that they collect from the different population groups of the country. The sectors then prioritise the types of assistance, the parts of the country that need that type of assistance and the target groups in the areas that require it.
That has been developed to guide us as organisations working on the ground and in the field to prioritise where best to put our efforts, but also to guide the international community and the donor community in the country to identify where best to target that type of assistance, given the very broad scope of needs and vulnerabilities and different levels of crisis that Lebanon is facing. To answer your question, the existing LCRP and ERP frameworks in Lebanon are there to help all of us really focus on where assistance can be most effective.
Q84 Kate Osamor: Suzanne and Hoda, I want to direct my questions on the cholera outbreak to you both. The Committee has heard reports from December 2022, so just last year, that there were 5,372 suspected or confirmed cases of cholera in Lebanon and, sadly, 23 deaths. First, Suzanne, what level of risk does the cholera outbreak pose to public health in Lebanon?
Suzanne Takkenberg: The cholera outbreak is a very good example of the possible consequences that a country such as Lebanon can face when it is struggling with such a multifaceted layer of crises in terms of the socioeconomic impact, and public infrastructure and access to services for the population overall. The first case was registered in the north of the country in October 2022. It spread quite quickly and affected all the different elements of the communities in the country. As I mentioned, the key factors that jointly contributed to the escalation of the outbreak were inadequate access to drinking water, poor sanitation, poor hygiene practices and a lack of wastewater management. Action Against Hunger has been providing clean water to individuals in informal settlements at the same time as monitoring water quality, desludging waste water from pits and distributing cholera kits, as well as raising awareness in the areas facing confirmed and suspected cases.
While the numbers have been quite high, as you just mentioned, it is important to say there has been a significant reduction in the daily case load of cholera in the last few weeks. I would say that is largely due to containment efforts that have been going on from the first day the first cases were identified, the vaccination campaign that was rolled out very quickly in the country, and a lot of the very proactive work that was done together with the Ministry of Public Health and the humanitarian community as a whole. That said, there remains a need to make sure that we continue financially supporting preventive measures. As I mentioned, they include public services and public infrastructure as there is a risk that cholera will spread again if we lose control of the containments.
Q85 Kate Osamor: Hoda, how can the displacement crisis be better managed in the future to reduce the risk of health threats such as cholera?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: For UNRWA, the water and sanitation services are administered inside the camps. We have all the infrastructure in place and we have always very closely monitored environmental health issues to avoid cholera or any other sort of public health issue or epidemic. As you know, with the overcrowded conditions in the camps, we cannot afford to have any spread of any environmental health risk.
For cholera, that has constituted an additional strain on our already limited resources because we have to pump more water. In order to pump more water, we have to provide more fuel to the pumping stations inside the camp, because there is no electricity in the country, as you know. We have to operate the pumping stations with power generators, which all need fuel. The price of fuel has been increasing every day and we have incurred additional cost to keep them going—to pump water, make sure we are chlorinating all the water sources, take samples daily and weekly, test the water samples and make sure that they are okay, and, last but not least, pay close attention to environmental health requirements at our schools. UNRWA has 63 schools in Lebanon and a large number of them are located in the 12 refugee camps.
Q86 Chair: Did you say that there is no electricity in the whole of Lebanon, Hoda?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: Yes. No electricity is provided—
Chair: May I stop you there? We are really up against it with time, so I need everyone to give very succinct answers.
Q87 Nigel Mills: Hoda, will you talk us through what impact the UK’s reducing its budget contributions has had? Have you managed to replace the money from elsewhere, or are you having to do less?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: Unfortunately, we have been having to do less. We have had to suffer a lower level of quality of our services. We have not been able to increase them as much as needed to cope with the crisis in Lebanon. The crisis in Lebanon requires us all to double, triple, quadruple assistance, and for the time being we are unable to do so, because of a shortage of funding. That shortage is pushing the refugees in Lebanon—Palestine refugees, specifically—to the brink of despair. We have all heard about the boat people—so many families who decide to take their families to throw themselves into the sea just to flee this completely desperate situation—and, in Lebanon, we have to understand that UNRWA was the lifeline of the refugees. They all look to UNRWA and expect from it public-like services at a time when our funding is very limited and resembles the funding of an NGO.
Q88 Nigel Mills: Is your financial position stable, or are you at risk of hitting real trouble in future? Is it too little, but stable, or is not predictably stable?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: The funding situation of UNRWA is for the time being not stable and not predictable. I believe that to be very risky. I do not know how long we can sustain that for. As I said, we provide state-like services—we have about 63 schools in Lebanon, 27 health centres, and social services for about 61,000 persons on what we call the social safety net programme—and public-like services in the camps, from the collection of garbage to running the sewerage system and the supply network. It is massive, yet the funding that we are operating with for the time being does not allow us to do proper planning or development of our services—human development services more than anything else. We believe that we should invest in human capital—we should invest in the Palestine refugees, instead of pushing them into hopelessness.
Q89 Chair: Hoda, briefly, have you had a funding cut, or is it that the demands have gone up?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: Both.
Q90 Mrs Latham: Najat, you talked about mine clearance and things, but will you expand slightly on how refugees are affected by unexploded ordnance when they are displaced across borders and stay in a host country?
Najat El Hamri: They are exposed in many different ways. As you know, when refugees seek refuge in a host country such as Lebanon, they do not have the whole awareness about contamination, so for us it is important to provide all this risk education. Being in camps, very often you have mines around, exposing people to some threats.
But what we have also seen is that, as you know, people want to have access to their basic needs—they want to have access to food and water. So they will go and try to find any land around, growing whatever they can to feed their family. Again, land being contaminated around them is putting them at risk, as well as children. As I mentioned earlier, children those unexploded ordnance, and so on and so forth.
What we felt as well with the Syrian refugees is that, as you know, some of them are using some routes to cross over Syria and Iraq, and there are obviously not border controls. Very often, they are not aware about the contamination of those locations, so they will cross and they are also exposing themselves—it is a dual risk.
Let me give you an example. Just last month, we had three reported cases—again, Syrian refugees. As you know, it’s winter. They want access to winterisation; many of our organisations are running winterisation projects. But Syrians do not have access to all of these winterisation means—fuel and so on. So they will go and cut wood. Again, we had a case reported last month where one of the Syrian refugees was injured.
So there are these constant threats around them—being exposed to UXO or mines. As we say, now it’s almost like survival: people are accessing any means to overcome or they are finding other coping mechanisms to survive. This is what we face.
Also, there is internal movement. As you know, some refugees move from one area to another area, hence why we have to provide them, at the very first, early stages of a response, with the awareness about contamination, so they do not expose themselves.
Q91 Mrs Latham: That is the refugees. What is happening in terms of the host country—the Lebanese?
Najat El Hamri: In terms of the host countries, obviously cluster munitions and unexploded ordnance is affecting both Syrian refugees and host communities. Very often, as I said, they want to have access to the land. We have seen lots of Lebanese now leaving urban areas and going back to rural areas. As we explained earlier in terms of teachers and so on, life is almost impossible.
They also want to have access to the land for farming or other activities. What we found with Mine Action, in terms of host communities having access to land—we support them in terms of clearance—is that, once the land is cleared, we have seen lots of Syrian refugees working. As you know, Syrians can have specific categories of job—for example, in agriculture. In a way we are creating some sort of social cohesion between host communities and Syrian refugees, providing an income and providing jobs. We have never felt there was any tension. Actually, it has always been working really, really well.
Like I said, they are both exposed to the same threats and the same risks. That is why we have got to work really in parallel risk education, supporting them to free their land.
If I can just mention the very last example, there is school as well. As you see, families are trying to opt for alternatives to offer educational support for their children, because, as you have seen, there are not so many teachers. We had one learning centre that was not accessible because of the threats. The threat is to Syrian and Palestinian refugees as well as to the host communities. So for us it was essential to free the area around the learning centre. Now we have more than 100,000 children able to go to school.
In a way, and as I said, we are working with both, hand in hand. It is not about specific categories—we are supporting both.
Q92 David Mundell: I have some questions for Hoda, and the other witnesses might also want to respond, about legal status and rights for refugees. I would be interested to know what legal status and rights refugees and displaced persons in Lebanon have. Does that vary depending on where they are from?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: Yes. The Palestine refugees are recognised in Lebanon; they have the refugee status. They are recorded or registered with the Lebanese Government—with the Lebanese state, I mean—and with UNRWA. When we say Palestine refugees, these are the 1948 refugees and their descendants.
There are some limitations on their rights in Lebanon. They face restrictions on their right to work. There are about 39 professions that they cannot exercise at all; they are completely prohibited from them. For the other professions, it is mostly the liberal professions that are also subject to internal by-laws that prohibit non-Lebanese from exercising these professions, and the Palestinians are considered as foreigners for these professions. So in addition to the 39 professions, for the rest of the professions, there are some processes to undertake, including getting a work permit and things like that that are rather complicated. They also cannot own any property whatsoever; they do not have the right to own any property whatsoever, and there are limitations on their right to work.
Q93 David Mundell: Are there impacts on which public services they can receive?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: They receive very limited public services. They do not receive any health public services at all, meaning that they cannot be treated at any public hospital where UNRWA does not have a contract. In governmental hospitals, UNRWA signs a contract with this hospital and UNRWA pays the bill for the hospitalisation of Palestine refugees there. Outside the public health services, they do have some access, but it is limited to the education services, meaning that they can join a public school after priority has been given to the Lebanese, obviously. If a school still has some vacant seats, they can accept Palestinians.
Q94 David Mundell: That sounds, as people say now, sub-optimal. Are you aware of other examples of host countries that are able to deal with things in a better way?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: In the five years of UNRWA, this is unique to Lebanon. For example, in Syria or Jordan, they can enjoy public services. They can be treated at public hospitals. They can take public sector positions. They can work freely in almost every single domain. These are limitations that, to my knowledge, are specific to Lebanon.
Q95 Chair: Thank you. Hoda, could Palestinian refugees become Lebanese citizens, or is that not an option to them?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: No. There have been, in the past, some naturalisations for limited numbers but, by law—by the constitution—they cannot. There is an official rejection of settlement; they call it final settlement of Palestine refugees in Lebanon—that is, naturalisation.
Q96 Mr Sharma: Najat, how do mine clearance programmes facilitate progress towards reaching the sustainable development goals?
Najat El Hamri: In many ways. Mine clearance has two impacts. One is quick. You have seen it on the ground. I will give you the example of the blue line in the south of Lebanon. We clear land and you have the communities already starting to work on the land. So there is a short, quick impact. People quickly want access to this land. Access to the land makes growing possible, and it is used for agricultural purposes. In terms of the sustainable development goals, it responds to many of them, such as hunger and having access to education—as I mentioned earlier, schools can be contaminated.
One of the biggest artificial lakes in Lebanon—Qaraoun—was mined. It was heavily contaminated with cluster munitions and unexploded ordnance, so we did the clearance around that. Now, that lake is used for irrigation systems and for electricity and energy. Also, we have residential areas. People are moving there. So, in terms of the SDGs, mine action has a quick but long-term impact, which you can feel reflected in people’s lives, hence why we work a lot with other operators and other organisations. We go and clear, and the other operators come and can do all the other types of development activities—refurbishing and building schools. That is how it fits into it.
Q97 Mr Sharma: Thank you for that response. What impacts have reductions in UK funding for mine clearance in Lebanon had on your programme?
Najat El Hamri: As I said, for our programme, MAG, the UK used to be the leading donor in mine action up to March 2021. We have felt a 30% reduction in our funding, and it is not just about funding: it is about having an impact on the ground. A 30% reduction means that we cannot continue to free land for the community to have access to it. And it is not just them; as I mentioned earlier, 60% of the land freed under UK funding has been used for development activity to build livelihoods.
So there is that funding reduction, but I also want to stress one point that I mentioned—I don’t want to repeat it, sorry. Like I said, the Government of Lebanon has made this international commitment to free Lebanon from cluster munitions by May 2026, and there is only 20% left. Now, it feels like delaying funding or cutting funding means that the completion date will be pushed again to the year after and the year after that. So you can see that it is just delaying progress—this is what the cut has meant.
Q98 Chair: Thank you for being with us today. I apologise that I have been forcing you along at a rapid pace; we overran on our first session and started late. Thank you for what you all do as organisations.
Najat, you said that you had received a 30% cut in your ODA funding from the UK. Hoda, do you know what percentage cut UNRWA has received from the UK?
Hoda Samra Souaiby: Well, the cut from the UK has been—
Q99 Chair: I will go to Suzanne while you have a look. Suzanne, what about you?
Suzanne Takkenberg: Action Against Hunger has not actually had UK funding in the previous year, so the reductions in-country haven’t impacted us.
Q100 Chair: When did you last have UK funding?
Suzanne Takkenberg: Well over five or six years ago, I believe.
Hoda Samra Souaiby: For us, since 2019, overall UNRWA funding dropped by 75%, and last year alone, the UK funding dropped by 48%.
Chair: We all recognise the value of the work you are doing, and we are deeply grateful for it as a Committee. Thank you all very much for taking the time today; it seems an impossible and untenable situation in Lebanon, but also across the whole region. Thank you for sharing your experiences of that.