TEL ABBAS AL GHARBI, Lebanon — Abdel Kareem Khalid Zaydan says he fled Homs six years ago and has since lived with his wife and two young children in a small informal settlement in northern Lebanon‘s Akkar district.
Zaydan has a painful spine condition — he pulls out a doctor’s letter to prove it — that he says was a result of being tortured while in government detention in Syria. Lately, his back pain has become more intense, preventing him from picking up occasional construction work as he used to, where he earned about $15 a day.
The family received United Nations food aid of about $120 a month when they first arrived in Lebanon, and again after their younger child was born. But the payments stopped. Zaydan says they were told they were not hungry enough to qualify.
Without cash assistance or work, Zaydan says, the family has been surviving on borrowed money. During Ramadan, they received extra help with meals brought three times a week by a nongovernmental organization. Another NGO paid to have a doctor take an X-ray of his back, but he has no way to pay for treatment.
“The situation is bad — what can I do?” Zaydan says. “I was sick from when I came to Lebanon, but this year the situation became critical. Bit by bit, the situation is getting more tense.”
As the Syrian conflict drags into its eighth year, refugees waiting out the war in neighboring countries are growing weary and increasingly desperate. At the same time, their host communities are becoming more resentful as international aid donations appear to be starting to wane. The question of how flagging international aid affects both displaced Syrians and host countries such as Lebanon takes on extra significance as World Refugee Day approaches on June 20.
In April, U.N. and European Union officials convened an international conference in Brussels to round up pledges of support for relief efforts both inside Syria and in the neighboring countries that host a bulk of the approximately 5.6 million refugees who have fled the country.
[SEE: The Tragic Numbers Behind Syria’s Refugees]
U.N. officials say $9 billion is needed for 2018, but only $4.4 billion in pledges have been forthcoming. Pledges often fall short of the goal for such appeals, but this year’s number was also a marked drop-off from the $6 billion that was pledged at last year’s conference.
The gap was noticeably widened by the absence of any promise from the United States, which last year had initially pledged half a billion dollars and ended up contributing $1.5 billion. But pledges from other major donors were also lower than last year. Germany, which pledged $1.4 billion last year and eventually paid $1.7 billion, has pledged $1 billion for this year.
U.N. officials say that the drop-off in funds could herald “ruin” for some of the neediest refugees in the region, including jeopardizing monthly cash assistance for some 87,000 Syrian families that are currently receiving it.
In Lebanon, which is hosting more than 1 million Syrians, the percentage of refugees living below the poverty line has grown steadily, reaching 76 percent in 2017, according to a United Nations assessment. The situation is exacerbated because Syrians in Lebanon are forbidden from working except in low-wage fields like agriculture and construction. Most also lack legal status in the country, which restricts their movement and makes working more difficult.
“When the crisis happened, people had some level of resources they brought with them. Those have been exhausted,” says Mike Bruce, spokesman with the Norwegian Refugee Council in Beirut, who adds that his organization’s funding is stable but not keeping up with the increasing needs.
The flattened level of aid amid increasing need is worsening conditions, agrees Nasser Yassin, director of research at the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs.
“The real [funding] numbers haven’t decreased, but the gap between the need and the funding has been widening.”
It remains to be seen how wide the gap will be for 2018. All or part of the missing contribution from the United States may still be forthcoming, but it’s unclear when or how much as the Trump administration pushes to cut foreign aid budgets. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in a statement that the U.S. does expect to contribute more to the Syrian refugee crisis response in 2018, but the amount has yet to be determined.
“The United States is the largest single country donor for the Syria response, providing nearly $8.1 billion in humanitarian assistance for those displaced inside Syria and the region since the start of the crisis,” she says. “We are maintaining our steadfast commitment to getting life-saving support to Syrians impacted by conflict, wherever they are.”
[READ: The False Assimilation of Syrian Refugees in Turkey]
In some cases, NGOs running on private donations make up the shortfalls in the governmental aid. But some of those NGOs say they are also seeing a flagging of interest.
“Previously, a crisis would happen [in Syria] and we would have donors just kind of flood in. Basically, donors would find us,” says Yisser Bittar, director of development with the U.S.-based nonprofit Karam Foundation, which runs aid programs both in Syria and in neighboring countries. Lately, the flood has subsided, and the group spends more of its resources chasing funders, she says.
In some cases, aid may also be shifting form.
While the U.N.’s refugee response plan for Lebanon in 2018 is one of the most underfunded portions — with only about 12 percent of the requested $2.2 billion committed as of May — international institutions have lined up to extend development loans to the small Mediterranean country.
At a separate April conference held in Paris, states, international organizations, and financial institutions pledged $11 billion in development aid to Lebanon, of which more than $10 billion would be loans.
“It’s an indication of the protracted nature of the crisis,” says American university’s Yassin. “We have to find other ways of financing.” But the shift to development aid risks overlooking some of the humanitarian needs of the refugees, he adds.
For now, Bruce says, the job of the international community and organizations like his is to make sure “conditions don’t get so bad that refugees decide returning to Syria is better than staying here.”
But even as the situation in host countries deteriorates for many refugees, the situation in Syria still looks worse to most. While political leaders in Lebanon have called repeatedly and loudly for refugees to go home, the mass forced returns that some had feared have not so far materialized, nor have the voluntary returns that others hoped for.
A trickle of returns has begun, including a recent exodus of several hundred refugees from Shebaa in southeastern Lebanon and plans for 3,000 more to return from Arsal in the northeast. In recent interviews in Arsal, municipal officials and returning refugees both say if the return is successful, they expect to see more to follow. But the vast majority of the approximately 50,000 refugees living in Arsal have chosen to stay put.
And as harsh as their situation is, Zaydan and his wife say they have no intention of returning to Syria.
“Our house was destroyed — there’s no security in Syria for us to return to,” said Zaydan’s wife, Hanan. “Where are we supposed to return to?”
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Flagging International Aid Worsens Conditions for Syrian Refugees originally appeared on usnews.com
