Displaced families in Lebanon yearn for peace and a return home

One of the classrooms is now home to Umm Hassan Baisi, a Lebanese woman from the southern city of Nabatieh who fled with her daughter and grandchildren after their home was badly damaged. Following an arduous two-day journey by car to reach the capital, she and her daughter spent several days sleeping on the streets while the children slept in the vehicle.

“I left with my daughter under the bombardment. We barely made it,” Umm Hassan said. “We slept outside for two or three days until they found space in this school for us … Everyone is psychologically drained, not just us here inside the school – everyone.”

They are sharing the classroom with another displaced family. Mattresses are arranged on the floor and their belongings are packed into plastic bags hanging from the walls on pupils’ coat hooks.

While Umm Hassan described conditions inside the school as uncomfortable, she said they were “a million times better” than being on the streets. What she and the other 1,200 people currently living at the school hope for more than anything is an end to the attacks and a lasting solution to the crisis that will allow them to return home.

“Half of my house was destroyed,” she said. “We hope that we will return home and this situation is solved, for everyone displaced to return to their home. We hope that we can … rebuild and go back to how we were living.”

During a visit to Lebanon on Sunday to express his solidarity and mobilize support for those affected, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi met with Umm Hassan and other families living at the school. Afterwards, he called for an urgent ceasefire and greater international support to respond to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

“This should be a place where children go to learn, to play, to spend time together. And yet, in the past few weeks, this has become a makeshift shelter for 1,200 people displaced from other parts of Lebanon that are currently affected by the conflict,” Grandi said.

“We need of course to provide people that are stranded in locations like this school with the basics: food, cash, water and sanitation, and items for everyday survival,” he added. “But most of all, we need this situation to stop. What is needed in this country, first and foremost, is a ceasefire … so that all the people that are displaced and all those that are affected can resume their normal lives.”

Emergency response

Since the start of intensified Israeli airstrikes on 23 September, teams from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, have been supporting the government’s response efforts. Staff are delivering emergency items including blankets, mattresses and medical trauma kits, and equipping many of the 900 temporary shelters opened by the authorities in schools and other public buildings to house displaced families.

In addition to the 1.2 million people estimated by the government to have fled their homes, between 200,000 and 300,000 people have crossed the border from Lebanon into Syria to escape the airstrikes, including Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinian refugees.

Just across town in the Barbir neighbourhood of the capital, Shaza Faris is a 59-year-old Syrian refugee who has lived in Lebanon since fleeing Damascus in 2013. She and her extended family are now crammed into her brother’s small three-roomed apartment along with his wife and four children after fleeing their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs amid heavy airstrikes two weeks ago.

“There was no time to take any decisions. As soon as the strike started, we fled,” Shaza said. “My granddaughters are 9, 7 and 3 years old. They started crying and screaming. The eldest said: ‘Get us out of the war. There’s war here and we don’t want to stay’.”