Amidst fears that hundreds of Syrian refugees and local Lebanese families could face disaster in freezing winter conditions in the mountains near the Syrian border, officials in the town of Arsal have declared a fuel emergency and appealed for urgent outside help to buy heating oil so they can survive the harsh months ahead.
At an altitude where temperatures can drop to minus 15oC, around 70,000 Syrian refugees, most of them living in tents, and 40,000 local Lebanese residents lack fuel for the diesel stoves that could help them through the winter, the worst of which is still to come.
Around 1400m up in the mountains, Arsal is the highest and most vulnerable of the refugee settlements in Lebanon.
The perils facing refugees trying to keep warm in the winter were highlighted in early January by the death of a Syrian mother and her three young children, asphyxiated by burning coal in their shelter in a coastal village in south Lebanon – at a much lower altitude than Arsal.
Many of the refugee families in Arsal have survived previous winters, but this one is different. Because of the Lebanese economic crisis, fuel prices in the collapsing local currency are now something like 20 times higher than they were 12 months before.
And because of budget cuts, the refugee agency UNHCR and other NGOs are only able to provide funding for less than 30% of the needs.
Each refugee family is left to find around $350 or more to buy the 700 litres of diesel they need to see them through the winter – an impossible sum for them to raise themselves.
Faced with potential disaster, the mayor of Arsal, Basel al-Hujairi, has taken the unusual step of declaring a winter fuel emergency and issuing an appeal, backed by local schools, health centres and NGOs, calling on the international community to step forward to help bridge the drastic funding gap.
“Please reflect on the consequences of leaving thousands of families in flimsy tents without heating in temperatures far below zero and biting winds,” the appeal said.
It needs to raise altogether some $5.5m, which would provide winter heating for 8,500 families huddled in tents, 3,000 in housing, and local Lebanese inhabitants in need, as well as schools, health centres and the municipality.
Issued by Edinburgh Direct Aid (https://edinburghdirectaid.org), a non-profit NGO which is one of the few to maintain a permanent presence in Arsal, running schools, a vocational centre and other projects.