Improving Safety and Security in Underserved Communities

Young people in the Mouassiseh Neighborhood participate in a focus group session, discussing their vision for an improved community.

Children have no place to play in the gatherings.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon face a discriminatory labor market, limited or non-existent access to education and health services, and complicated formalities to prove they have a right to be in the country at all. They face staggering rates of joblessness, internal fighting, and disgraceful housing conditions.

According to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), Lebanon has the highest percentage of Palestinian refugees living in abject poverty. 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon — who were, or their descendants were, displaced in 1948 — constitute one of the world’s longest suffering refugee populations.

We’ve undertaken a major new program focusing on tangibly improving the living conditions for Palestinian refugees and low-income Lebanese families in the underserved communities of the greater Tyre area. It is here, in southern Lebanon, where families are crowded into informal refugee camps known as “gatherings”. These gatherings lack the basic infrastructure for acceptable standards of health and security.

They live on top of open channels of sewage and rotting piles of garbage, increasing the spread of disease. Narrow, unlit alleyways facilitate crime and cause fear at night. The desperation of poverty and the loss of hope are fertile ground for fomenting discord and promoting violence.

ANERA is working with local Lebanese and Palestinian partners on a broad program focusing on southern Lebanon to do the following:

• rehabilitate essential infrastructure
• eliminate environmental hazards putting families’ health at risk
• engender reconciliation between Lebanese and Palestinian communities

In participatory assessments, women and youth have identified pressing threats to environmental health, child safety, and community security. These processes empower community members to actively participate in community development work.

The first project responding to one community’s request has already begun – the rehabilitation of the electricity network in Al-Mouassiseh Neighborhood bordering Burj As-Shamali Camp. Improving this basic service will reduce household expenses, eliminate hazards from shock and fire, and illuminate dark streets and alleys at night. Bringing the neighborhood properly into the community’s electrical network is something everyone can agree is a step in the right direction.

We continue to work with many communities who are mending their lives and infrastructure from the war in 2006. We have brought aid to generations of people healing from wounds inflicted by the long civil war that ended almost two decades ago.

We are dedicated to the Palestinian families who have waited 60 years for resolution and peace to come back to their lives. And we continue to expand upon and implement new projects throughout the Middle East.

With support from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives, ANERA is working to improve the quality of life in communities housing a mix of low-income Palestinian and Lebanese populations.