Displaced Families and Uncertain Futures; Life Goes On

On The Road Blog

Displaced Families and Uncertain Futures; Life Goes On

By Victoria Dunning on March 15th, 2010
Category: Blog, Middle East and North Africa

Beirut, Lebanon – Until now, I thought of refugee camps mostly as short-term, makeshift communities serving people who are temporarily displaced—images of canvas tents stamped with blue UNHCR logos and lots of bags of rice come to mind. I understood that even in these temporary refugee settlements, life goes on. Schools are established so children can continue (or start) formal schooling. Health clinics are set up to meet primary healthcare needs. Formal and informal systems help separated families become reunited. I also knew that some refugee camps are operational for much longer than a few weeks or a few months. Here, babies are born. Refugees practice their trades within the camp community. A school term passes, and then another.

Now that I’m beginning to learn the field and have had the opportunity to visit some camps, I’m keenly aware that the situation is quite complex. In Lebanon, and with the decades-long, ongoing struggle of Palestinian displacement, the situation is especially so. Lebanon is home to roughly 422,000 registered Palestinian refugees, and many more who are unregistered. Here, the refugee camps have become long-term, semi-permanent communities whose residents have been there for decades and over generations.

In Beirut, one such a camp, Burj el-Barajneh, established in 1948, is right within the city limits. It is home to over 16,000 registered refugees and hosts seven primary schools and one health center. While there is freedom of movement into and out of the camp to the city of Beirut, the refugees have little access to Lebanese society, services, and economy. The camp is not under Lebanese jurisdiction, but rather is loosely governed by a series of factions, more resembling gang turf than administrative and governance areas. In this camp, the structures are not makeshift tents; they are multistory cinderblock buildings where people live, learn, and worship—homes, clinics, schools, mosques, and grocery shops are all represented.

While the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (the UN’s special entity to provide relief and humanitarian services to Palestinian refugees) recognizes the refugee status of the inhabitants, helps define the camp’s environs, and has created primary schools, it has little day-to-day support for the refugees, who, after decades of displacement, are living in a self-contained and externally defined community.

During my visit to Burj el-Barajneh to meet with several prospective grantee partners, I was struck by the long-term and indefinite nature of the camp. There is much uncertainty in the lives of those who live here, as though a peaceful détente might be interrupted at any time by violence. Plans for the future are difficult to make and are limited, since the residents’ possibilities for friends, colleagues, and economic partners are strictly and externally defined by the camp’s borders and by societal boundaries. The prospective grantee organizations I met with provide programs and services for children and youth—one operates a preschool that provides an educational foundation and a nurturing and safe environment for the camp’s youngest residents; another runs a vocational skills program where older adolescent boys learn the trades of plumbing and electrical work to serve the camp’s residents. Life goes on—over decades, across generations—here in these “temporary” camps.