‘Informal Tent Settlement’

We visited an Informal Tent Settlement (ITS) a few days ago which is about 2 miles from the ‘settled’ refugee camp I’m staying in. The situation here in the surrounding area is less acute than in the Bekaa valley I’m told. There are tent settlements scattered throughout the countryside every few hundred metres or so. Each one home to several hundred Syrian refugees. My host Melad works with the children in this area and has good relationships with the men who live here. With the NGO Warchild I will be working with these children also. Melad is a third generation Palestinian refugee so it was interesting to see the solidarity shown from Syrians to Palestinians. One of the men told Melad that his children had fought and died fighting for Palestinians during the revolution. That’s solidarity. Palestinians in the region, such as my friends in Nahr al Bared have been there since 1949- 66 years! Without the potential for return to Syria then these ‘tent villages’ may start to resemble Palestinian camps over time. Palestinians themselves spent their first few decades in exile living in tents.

In Nahr al Bared itself there are between 2-3,000 Palestinian-Syrian refugees. These are Palestinian refugees, exiled from Palestine during the 1948 ‘Arab-Israeli war’ (others also fled the 1967 ‘six-day war’) who settled as refugees inside Syria but who have recently been made refugees yet again. Some fleeing Assad, others fleeing Daesh (ISIS) as in the case of the Yarmouk camp as I was informed by former Yarmouk residents in Nahr al Bared- one side is besieged by Assad and the other by Daesh. The exodus of Palestinians from Syria and the likely exclusion of them from EU asylum policy, given they are not technically full citizens of Syria, highlights the fluidity and complexity of the situation and also urges that all refugees are consulted and considered when searching for real solutions to the current crisis.

As with all refugees I have met they were immediately welcoming and happy to share what they have with outsiders. We ate a meal and then they offered Sheesha. Unfortunately I don’t know Arabic so I wasn’t privy to the entire conversation Melad had with the men from Homs. They did tell me about one child they had with them who’s parents were killed during the Assad government’s onslaught against rebel held Homs more than 3 years ago. The young child, Faraz, had travelled with his neighbours to this camp in Lebanon.

Ahmad and Hamad from Homs
Ahmad and Hamad from Homs
Ahmad, Hamad and Faraz from Homs
Ahmad, Hamad and Faraz from Homs
Ahmad showing me round the tent settlement
Ahmad showing me round the tent settlement
sharing a meal with the men
sharing a meal with the men

The residents had been at this camp for 3 years now and are searching for ways to move on. There is some limited schooling available to the kids here and NGOs like warchild help provide other services. Some limited opportunities for seasonal work is available for the adults in the surrounding farms, this with dubious legality and naturally, very low wages. Even with the small comfort provided by these limited opportunities, it is a cramped space on a rented field and is certainly not somewhere for any number of people to stay for a long period of time. 3 years in this place must be torture. Melad pointed out to me several other areas where there had been ITSs which had been moved. The local farmers rent plots of land via the UN and other agencies so when any contract expires the people are vulnerable to being moved on again. There was one camp by the barren coast-line where a whole settlement had been moved, yet one elderly man remained. He was living in a dilapidated makeshift tent in the middle of the field.

the last remaining refugee on this site
the last remaining refugee on this site

We are on the western slopes of the snowed capped Mt. Lebanon mountain range, the winters are cold and wet, though not as harsh as those in the Bekaa valley on the other side of the mountain range where there are many more refugees. One thing I noticed about the camp was that it consisted mainly of women, children and elderly men, presumably these are the ones not yet able to make the perilous sea crossing to Turkey or Europe. They did say that they planned on making the journey, perhaps they were waiting for the ‘right time’. I don’t know but it’s clear that 3 years and counting in this purgatory only makes the sea voyage more appealing by the day.

Nahr al Bared

Staying with Palestinian refugees in a camp in Northern Lebanon, is not the kind of thing I could have guessed I would be doing at this point in life.  A good friend Grazia, a PhD student at Glasgow University suggested that I come to visit Lebanon while she is here on a study and research trip and as I have been playing bagpipes at a circus in China, we thought it a good idea to work with children here at the camp doing some music and kids games.

Grazia’s close friend Melad lives at the camp and helped arrange access for us both to visit, which is generally nearly impossible to get.  Nahr al Bared is a closed camp, unlike all others in Lebanon. It has existed since 1949 and despite UN resolution 194 which declares that Palestinian refugees have the right of return, the Israeli state and international ambielance prevents them from doing so.

the camp centre
the camp centre

As you can see from some of the photos, this is a ‘settled’ camp, for want of a better word.  Families live when possible in brick houses as opposed to the tents we more often associate with refugee camps such as many of the ones in Lebanon providing shelter to the 1.2 million recent Syrian arrivals.   That said, some of the houses are ‘temporary’ prefabricated ones as in the photos above and were built as a quick fix after the entire camp was made homeless in 2007, 8 years on their temporary housing remains.  

'temporary housing' where families have been living for the past 8 years
‘temporary housing’ where families have been living for the past 8 years

Most other housing too is ‘temporary’ in that everyone is waiting for reconstruction of their homes by UNRWA, it’s taken 8 years to complete 4 sections out of 10 at the camp. 70 years in one very small place with almost no hope of return to Palestine or escape to elsewhere means many are resigned to staying here for years to come.  These kinds of camps have been growing since 1948 and without proper solutions to the current outflow of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere we can expect many, many more.  Indeed this camp has also recieved some 3,000 ‘Syrian’ refugees, fellow Palestinians from Syrian beseiged Syrian camps such a Yarmouk.  In Lebanese terms that’s a very small number but consider the fact that this tiny camp, offcially 1km x 1km has taken in 20% of the 15,000 total that the UK has promised to.

the old school beside the new school
the old school beside the new school

After the war in 2007 when the Lebanese military bombarded and entirely destroyed the camp the population here has been under strict surveillance and control, so all those who enter must seek permission to do so from the Lebanese military and pass through heavily fortified checkpoints to enter. For outsiders this is an inconvenience and usually prevents access, for residents of the camp this represents a daily humiliation and economically, it’s cripling. Before the ‘war’ (given the asymmetry of the conflict, it feels perverse to call it a ‘war’), Nahr al Bared was home to a thriving market, one of the largest in Northern Lebanon. Now the daily reality for families here is one of grinding poverty with few prospects for the future.

prefabs
prefabs

Lebanese law proscribes Palestinians from employment in over 20 professions (until recently this was more than 70) and as friends here tell me, the bar in itself isn’t the biggest obstacle they face for in permitted employment roles such as nursing, something Palestinians have traditionally excelled at, growing discrimination has become a huge problem.  A young resident Adele, who works with the UN, told me that Palestinians are considered as ‘bacteria’ in Lebanon as she was explaining that whole hospitals had started imposing outright bans on the employment of Palestinians, so even if some professions were ‘open’, job opportunities are scarce. One of the main problems here, Melad tells me, to compound the grim realities of daily existence, is the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, especially among the youth.

 

 

Bakir
Bakir