Not a World Record to be Proud of: 400,000 People Camping in -11 °C
Right now, at least 400,000 people in Bekaa Valley are reluctantly waiting out winter storm Zina in tents as an arctic presence envelops Lebanon. They are refugees who escaped violence in Syria for a life in limbo; Lebanese policy prevents Syrian refugees from setting up permanent housing out of fear that they’ll stay in the country.
Temperatures as low as -11 °C haunt camps like those in Arsal. The Daraa media office reports six Syrian refugees have passed away from the cold in Lebanon:
1. Fadl Nassif (baby — boy), aged seven months
2. Huda Abdulaziz (child — girl), aged 4
3. Majid Al-Badawi (child — boy), aged 6
4. Heba Abdulghani (child — girl), aged 10
5. Ammar Kamal, aged 35
6. Unnamed young man, accompanying the child Majid Al-Badawi
Humanitarian disasters invoke less empathy when the narrative has a political context. There is a tendency to assume that each civilian is personally responsible for their own circumstance in times of war. Yet even a winter storm has been unable to gather the Syrian refugees a significant share in the global attention economy.
Therefore I feel the need to stress: It’s not their fault. It’s not the refugee’s fault that they are living in a tent during merciless snow storm. Neither the barrel bomb blows of Assad that pushed them out of their homes nor the meteorological blow of Zina that’s settling in their bones are their fault. The indiscriminate cold shoulder of Zina works together with the discriminate cold shoulder of the Lebanese government to create unlivable conditions.
To put it into context, if Bekaa Valley were Austin then half the city population would be living in tents. Austin-based NGO Watan USA has teamed up with an emergency response team in Arsal to deliver survival packages.
The technology age has allowed humans to overcome physical distances; we can connect with people around the world with a few buttons. We’re also able to do more to support our neighbors down the street and our neighbors across oceans. Thank you, Watan USA.
DONATE $20 to Watan USA: Emergency Winter Storm Campaign
