(BEKAA VALLEY, LEBANON) — The heads of UNHCR and the UN Development Program visited Syrian refugees and joint projects in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. High Commissioner António Guterres said that the Syria crisis had become the worst humanitarian tragedy of our times.
The visit underscored a shift in the international response to the Syrian crisis: not only should assistance flow to refugees, said Guterres and Clark, but increasingly it must also flow to host communities in neighboring countries to help them cope with the burden.
“The international community is not doing enough for Lebanon,” Guterres said, while visiting a refugee settlement. “The impact on the daily life of the Lebanese, on their salaries, on their rents, their school system, the health system, the infrastructure, water, electricity: all this requires massive solidarity from the international community and Lebanon has the right to ask the international community to share this burden.”
He added that, “preserving Lebanon’s stability is everybody’s business.”
According to an official report, the number of registered and unregistered refugees in Lebanon reached 1.5 million, around 30 percent of Lebanon’s population.
The three-year-old conflict in Syria has displaced some 6 million people, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.
Watch the UN report:
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