By India Stoughton
The following is the second in a series focusing on Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
SAADNAYEL, Lebanon: Just outside Saadnayel, the skeletal concrete framework of a monolithic building resounds with the sound of children’s voices, bubbling with laughter as they chase each other through the dim hallways. Living arrangements in this half-finished building – where multiple families reside together, each housed in a single room – are as entertaining for these children as they are stressful for their parents. These families are the lucky ones. Thanks to a shelter project initiated and maintained by the Norwegian Refugee Council they are able to live rent free in a house that, although unfinished, boasts doors and windows, lights and running water, and a bathroom and kitchen – fundamentals many less fortunate refugees lack. They are guaranteed free accommodation for a year, giving them time to begin building a new life.
The NRC began transforming half-finished buildings into refugee housing two years ago, soon after displaced families from Syria began pouring across the border. The project, funded by organizations including the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the humanitarian aid and civil protection department of the European Commission (ECHO) and the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry, assesses families based on vulnerability criteria, housing those most in need of help.
“Because of the way the Lebanese tend to save and plan for the future,” explains the program manager, Roger Dean, “there are a lot of buildings that are constructed very slowly, over a period of years. ... There’s a lot of buildings which are the concrete frame, the walls and the roof and not much more out there.
“Refugees and people from Syria were already going into these buildings and living in very poor conditions, but we saw this as an opportunity to create a program which would benefit both the Lebanese building owners and the displaced Syrians.”
The NRC approaches building owners in the Bekaa Valley, in areas of north and south Lebanon, and in some of the Palestinian camps, and offers to finance upgrades to a suitable unfinished building in return for permission to house displaced Syrian families there for a period of one year.
The upgrades typically include installing doors and windows and a simple kitchen and latrine, as well as connecting buildings to water and electrical supplies, and cost around $4,000 to $6,000 per building to implement, says project coordinator Leanne Abouzeid.
The shelter project is all about forging relationships, explains Dean, and property owners are encouraged to organize the upgrades themselves, using local workmen.
“It means all the money is recycled into the local community,” he says. “So at the end of the project the building owner has an asset that they can contribute to their family income, the tradesmen have had work and the refugees have been sheltered.”
The aim is to give refugees coming into the country time to establish themselves and make some connections. “They have a relationship with the building owner,” says Dean. “They have a relationship with the storekeeper where they get their food. They have a relationship perhaps with the farmer who gives them some work sometimes, and that helps them connect and live a reasonably normal life.”
Many of the displaced families want nothing more than to become self-sufficient. Mohammad, who arrived in Lebanon 10 months ago, was renting a room and searching for a way to bring his family to safety when he met an NRC employee, who found him a room just outside Saadnayel. Once settled, he contacted his family in Qusair and his mother, wife and children came to join him, along with his siblings and their families.
Currently 25 people from three generations are sharing the unplastered room – intended to house a single family of five – where they live, cook and sleep. Four of the men are of working age and are willing to take any job they can find, but Mohammad, who worked in construction in Syria, explains that they have been unable to find any work in Saadnayel or the surrounding area, even on a day-to-day basis.
His mother, surrounded by a crowd of dark-eyed grandchildren, explains that if they could find work they would rent two rooms and support themselves, but for the moment they are dependent on the NRC housing and the food vouchers they receive from the UNHCR.
With just four months left of their allotted year, they are increasingly worried about what comes next. “When our time finishes, where will we go?” he asks.
“This is something that a lot of the refugees who are living in our shelters and have been here for a long time are concerned about,” Abouzeid explains, “that the expiry date of the contract is going to be finishing and they’re wondering where they’re going to be able to go after that. And that’s a problem, because we have more and more people coming in and we have to attend to their shelter needs as well as the existing caseloads that we have.”
A UNHCR report published Friday put the official number of refugees in Lebanon at over 600,000, stating that the number of displaced families arriving in the Bekaa Valley had increased from 502 to 606 in the past week.
In the Bekaa Valley alone the shelter program is currently housing 1,700 families, Dean explains, a family on average numbering five people. While many refugees remain in need of assistance, one of the long-term aims of the shelter program is to create affordable rooms for rent.
“We realize that we can’t take constant responsibility for sheltering the same families year after year,” explains Dean, “because the need is so very great, but we think that one of the biggest benefits of this program is that every time we complete one of these unfinished buildings ... it’s a new one that’s in the rental market, and that helps work against rent inflation.
“The best thing we can do for the picture most broadly is to keep pumping out new properties. ... That means that at the end of one year it’s very tough, but our assistance does end. What we hope is that the family has then had a year of rent-free shelter in which they can establish themselves, they can find some sort of work, and hopefully they are then ready to enter the rent-paying sector.”
This approach enables the program to extend to a greater number of families. “Since the Syrian response started I think the shelter assistance has been to 10,000 families in total,” says the NRC’s Lebanon country director, Niamh Murnaghan. “So it is quite substantial, but in the context of the number of arrivals it’s still only a drop in the ocean.
“One of the remarkable circumstances of this crisis,” she elaborates, “is that there has been such willingness to support and house the refugees within Lebanon and certainly in some of the sites that we’ve visited the landlords are providing additional support. ... It’s very impressive to see the contribution that comes from local communities.”
While grateful for the help they’re receiving, many of the displaced families long to return to Syria. Mohammad says that the local community has been welcoming, but he still feels like an outsider.
“No matter how good it is here,” he explains, “it’s not the same. You don’t feel you belong. If we go back to our country and our houses are destroyed and we need to live in a tent that’s fine, just as long as it’s in our own country.”
Copyrights 2011, The Daily Star - All Rights Reserved
15/07/2013
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