More than 400,000 children have been displaced in the last three weeks in Lebanon, a senior UNICEF official said on Tuesday, warning of a possible “lost generation” due to the war between Hezbollah and Israel.
The deputy executive director for humanitarian actions at the United Nations Children’s Fund, Ted Chaiban, visited schools that have been transformed into shelters to welcome displaced families in Lebanon. “What struck me was that this war is three weeks old and so many children have already been affected,” Chaiban told the Associated Press (AP) news agency in Beirut.
“Today, as we stand here, 1.2 million children are being deprived of an education. Their public schools have become inaccessible, have been damaged by war or are being used as shelters. The last thing this country needs, In addition to everything that has already happened, there is a risk of a lost generation”, highlighted the UNICEF official. “It is worrying to know that we have hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian children who are at risk of losing their learning,” said Chaiban.
More than 2,300 people in Lebanon were killed in Israeli attacks, almost 75% of these in the last month, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. In the past three weeks, more than 100 children have been killed and more than 800 injured, Chaiban said.
The senior UNICEF official highlighted that displaced children are crammed into overcrowded shelters, where three or four families can live in a classroom separated by a plastic sheet and where 1,000 people can share 12 bathrooms. Many displaced families set up tents along roads or on public beaches.
Although some Lebanese private schools are still operating, the public school system has been severely affected by the war, along with the country’s most vulnerable people such as Palestinian and Syrian refugees.
The escalation of violence has left more than 100 primary health care units out of service and 12 hospitals are no longer functioning or are only providing partial services. In the last three weeks, 26 stations that supply water to almost 350,000 people have been damaged. UNICEF is working with local authorities to repair them, according to Chaiban.
“What we must do is make sure that this ends, that this madness ends, that there is a ceasefire before we get to the kind of destruction, pain, suffering and death that we saw in Gaza,” Chaiban said. With so many needs, he said, Lebanon’s $108 million emergency response appeal was only 8% funded three weeks after the escalation began.
Chaiban called for civilian infrastructure to be protected and called for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza, saying there needed to be political will and an understanding that the conflict cannot be resolved through military means.
After a year of exchanges of fire on the border, Israel has intensified its campaign against the Shiite group Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent weeks, including ground operations. Fighting in Lebanon has driven 1.2 million people from their homes, most of whom have fled to Beirut and other parts of the north in the past three weeks since the escalation of violence.
