AT LEAST 230,000 LEBANESE LEFT LEBANON IN 4 MONTHS

Tue 19 October 2021:

According to a local NGO, some 230,000 Lebanese residents have migrated from Lebanon in the first four months of this year.

Tony Khadra, the head of the Labora NGO, told local radio Lebanon Voice that the sectarian issue was a major factor in the country’s migration.

“Around 90% of Lebanese with foreign passports have left Lebanon since September,” Khadra said.

In September, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) said poverty in Lebanon has “drastically increased” over the past year, affecting around 74% of the population.

Since late 2019, Lebanon has been grappling with some of the severest domestic challenges, including currency devaluation which lost almost all of its value against US dollar, along with shortages of fuel and medicine.

Figures show that four million Lebanese live inside Lebanon while 16 million live in diaspora.

The Lebanese government, now led by billionaire Prime Minister Najib Mikati, hopes to renew negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a recovery programme and to receive economic aid from the international community.

Experts have said it could take years for the economy to recover, with Lebanon needing to uproot decades of systematic corruption and restructure an inefficient economy.

Extreme poverty

The UN estimates that 78 percent of the Lebanese lives below the poverty line – some three million people – with 36 percent of the population living in extreme poverty. Almost a quarter of the population was not able to meet their “dietary needs” by the end of last year, the UN said.

The food crisis in Lebanon has significantly worsened in recent months amid fuel shortages and price rises.

Food crisis is not a recent development. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimated that food prices have gone up by 628 percent in just two years, compounding Lebanon’s economic meltdown, which has plunged three-quarters of its population into poverty and devalued the Lebanese pound by about 90 percent.

Impoverished Syrian refugees have been particularly hard hit by the crisis.

According to the UNHCR, an estimated 90 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon now live in extreme poverty – amid a wider figure of 36 percent in the country.

According to the UNHCR, he is among the 67 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon who are now skipping meals.

FILE PHOTO: A cardboard cutout of Lebanese politician hung in a noose during a demonstration in Beirut on August 8, 2020, following the deadly blast in the Lebanese capital. (Screen capture: Twitter)

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