SYRIAN REFUGEES FREEZING IN TENTS AS LEBANON REFUSES THEM BETTER HOUSING THAT COULD ENCOURAGE THEM TO STAY

Plight of the Syrian refugees dying of cold in Lebanon after authorities refuse to grant their camps official recognition.

This week's storm, dubbed Alexa, pushed temperatures below freezing in northern Lebanon and some areas of the Bekaa Valley, which is dotted with informal refugee settlements.

 

'We are extremely "concerned" for the refugees this winter that promises to be very harsh,' Dana Sleiman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees told The Associated Press.

 

Since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011, more than two million Syrians - at least half of them children - have fled the violence in their homeland to neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq. 

 

Many will spend the winter in flimsy tents with often only a plastic sheet covering the ground.

 

In Lebanon, more than 835,000 refugees live in tented camps, unused buildings or with friends or family, according to figures from the UN High Commission for Refugees. The government of the country of just 4.5million people estimates the numbers to be much higher, at around 1million.

 

Unlike in Turkey, Jordan and Iraq, the Lebanese government is not providing facilities or land to temporarily accommodate refugees despite the continuing influx, which has effectively increased the population of the country by 25 per cent.

 

Many Syrians in Lebanon live in appalling conditions, finding shelter in slums, tents and tin shacks strung with laundry lines and wedged between farmland outside towns and cities.

 

In the capital, Beirut, many Syrians live in underground parking lots, under bridges and on old construction sites with no running water, sanitation, electricity or protection from Lebanon's sizzling summers and its freezing winters.

 

Palestinian refugees set a bad precedent, with their violent involvement in Lebanon's politics

The country has a troubled history of hosting refugees. Palestinian families who left Israel during the Arab attack on Israel in 1948 still live in squalid refugee camps across Lebanon.  Their presence was seen by some as disrupting Lebanon's delicate sectarian balance and a contributing factor in the 1975 to 1990 civil war that devastated the country.

 

Now some Lebanese worry that if official camps are set up for the latest flood of refugees from Syria, they too could become as established as those housing Palestinians.  So, for now, aid agencies can help the Syrian newcomers with food, tents, blankets and clothes but they cannot set up formal refugee camps

Read more - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523132/Syrian-refugees-dying-cold-camps-refused-official-recognition.html

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL BERATES

THE EUROPEAN UNION

FOR NOT HELPING SYRIAN REFUGEES

 

The world's most famous human rights group Amnesty International has said that European leaders should be ashamed by the paltry numbers of refugees from Syria they are prepared to resettle. Only 10 member states have offered to take in only 1200 refugees.

Britain has faced heavy criticism along with Italy for offering no places at all.  In a briefing published on Friday, the organization details how European Union (EU) member states have only offered to open their doors to around 12,000 of the most vulnerable refugees from Syria: just 0.5 per cent of the 2.3 million people who have fled the country.

Read more - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/European-response-to-Syrian-refugees-pitiful-Amnesty/articleshow/27298258.cms

 

 

EUROPEAN UNION GIVING BILLIONS OF EUROS TO PALESTINIANS WHO DO NOT WORK AT ALL

 

In the meantime the European Union has been giving billions of Euros to the Palestinians, financing their violent demands for a state on Jewish land. 

E.U. auditors recently found that much of that money goes to Palestinians who do absolutely no work at all.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-eu-gaza-aid-idUSBRE9BA0HO20131211




RAWABI - Brand new upscale Palestinian city

A gleaming hi-tech city, with homes for 40,000 residents, cinemas, shopping malls, schools, landscaped walkways, office blocks, a conference centre, restaurants and cafes, is rising on a crest within sight – on a clear day – of the Tel Aviv skyline 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/08/rawabi-west-bank-city-palestine



RELATED  - SYRIAN REFUGEES

Life in a Jordanian refugee camp
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2503275/Inside-Syrian-refugee-camp-120-000-fled-civil-war.html


Photos inside a refugee camp in Jordan that has now become a huge city
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2371311/Syrian-Zaatari-refugee-camp-home-160-000-Jordans-fifth-largest-city.html


Jordan's poor under increased strain after influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.  There's not enough water as it is in this country, one of the world's driest, and now there are more people sharing what little is available.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/21/jordana-s-rural-poorchafeundertheburdenofhostingsyrianrefugees.html


More than a million Syrian children becoming permanent refugees, as the war drags on
http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/unhcr-warns-about-the-dire-effects-of-the-war-on-syrian-refugee-children


Syrian children facing catastrophe in exile United Nations says
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/nov/29/syrian-refugee-children-catastrophe-exile-un


LATEST NEWS
The United States and Britain suspend aid to northern Syria after Islamists seize weapon store

(Reuters) - The United States and Britain suspended non-lethal aid to northern Syria after Islamist fighters seized Western-backed rebel weapons warehouses, highlighting fears that supplies could end up in the wrong hands.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-syria-crisis-usa-idUSBRE9BA08820131211


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