Lebanon

The International Rescue Committees’s Emergency Response Team has concluded a three-month relief effort in Lebanon that provided urgent assistance to thousands of people affected by recent fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah.

After a ceasefire was announced in August, the IRC’s plan to aid displaced people in Beirut evolved into a program to help Lebanese returnees in bombarded southern villages.

Marjayoun, Lebanon - 06 Sep 2006 -   The International Rescue Committee is replacing water tanks and generators in five battered villages in and around Marjayoun in southern Lebanon as part of a new program to improve water supply and hygiene in areas hit hard by the recent violence.

Beirut, Lebanon - 25 Aug 2006 -   The International Rescue Committee and local partner Association Najdeh have distributed hygiene and household supplies to hundreds of people who fled the recent violence in Lebanon and took shelter in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Beirut.

Tens of thousands of uprooted Lebanese streamed back to their villages in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut this week as the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah fighters began to take hold.

Roads are packed with returnees and with restored access, more and more aid convoys are reaching battered areas of the country.

IRC emergency team leader Alan Manski and emergency environmental health coordinator Jason Snuggs traveled with a local Lebanese aid group to the southern Lebanese district of Hasbaiya today to begin assessing humanitarian needs.

With hope that the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah will hold, Lebanese people who fled fierce fighting in southern Lebanon and southern suburbs of Beirut are returning home.  The IRC’s emergency team leader Alan Manski is in Beirut, coordinating the IRC’s expanding relief efforts.

For the last month, Beirut was swelling with Lebanon’s displaced.

Beirut, Lebanon - 11 Aug 2006 -   Members of the International Rescue Committee’s Emergency Response Team have completed a week of assessments in and around Beirut, where hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence in southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut have settled. Focusing on environmental health concerns and the needs of women and children, team members met with Lebanese and international aid groups, U.N. agencies, local specialists and individuals at some two dozen settlements where the displaced have sought refuge.

The latest fighting in the Middle East has uprooted an estimated one million Lebanese civilians and nearly half of them are reported to be children and adolescents.  Tens of thousands have settled in schools, parks, garages, vacant apartments and other spaces not intended to house displaced people. IRC emergency response coordinator Melissa Winkler met some of these children and their families this week.

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Beirut, Lebanon - 07 Aug 2006 -   Maya, who is seven years old, sits despondently on a dirty mattress in the corner of a stark room that is now home to her, as well as four brothers and sisters, her parents, and her grandmother.  In spite of the bleak situation her family now faces, she breaks into a beautiful smile when members of the International Rescue Committee’s emergency response team arrive to assess humanitarian needs.

Beirut, LEBANON - 03 Aug 2006 -   Another team of International Rescue Committee aid workers has arrived in Beirut, as more displaced Lebanese settled in and around the city, fleeing devastating bombardments in the south.