People with disabilities ‘most vulnerable’ in Lebanon war

Beirut — As bombs rained down on Beirut’s southern suburbs, Ali Hussaini faced a heart-wrenching challenge: how to explain what was happening to his two partially deaf daughters.

“They would ask me what is going on? Why are we running away?” Hussaini said.

“When the bombs hit, I would try to move them away from the sound, but when they saw their siblings who can hear run towards us ... they would be puzzled,” he said.

Unable to hear the bombs falling, the girls only understood the scale of the war when they saw the destroyed buildings in the Mreijeh neighbourhood where they live in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Hussaini’s daughters lost most of their hearing when they contracted meningitis at birth. They had been using hearing aids until two years ago when Hussaini found he could no longer afford to pay for them, despite working two jobs as a taxi driver and a manual labourer.

The family of seven fled their home as Israel intensified its bombing campaign from late September. At first, they camped on the street before finding a place in a shelter.

But there was some good news among the devastation. One of the people running the shelter offered to help the girls get the implants they need, which will last for one year.

After that Hussaini, who said he had never received support from the government, does not know what he will do.

More than 900,000 people in Lebanon are classified as living with disabilities, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

People living with disabilities face “a systemic lack of provisions for rights, resources and services, and experience widespread marginalisation, exclusion and violence at home and outside”, the UNDP said.

Things only got worse during the recent conflict that was ignited by the Gaza war last year and eased off with the agreement of a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah last week.

“Persons with disabilities have been gravely affected by these dynamics, living in inadequate housing, lacking essential services and access to livelihoods and often, during displacement, are left behind,” said French independent aid group Handicap International in an October report.

In November, Lebanon’s ministry of social affairs announced it was allocating funds from the budget to provide a one-off cash transfer of $100 to people with disabilities.

Experts have said the government’s emergency response has not included people with disabilities and in October, humanitarian professionals and advocates who work with people with disabilities formed an emergency task force.

“In the chaos of emergencies, it is devastating to witness how persons with disabilities are often overlooked, their needs pushed aside when they are most vulnerable,” Cheryl Moawad an equity and inclusion specialist with the Italian Avsi Foundation, that focuses on vulnerable communities, said.

“But amid the heartbreak, there’s a powerful light — community-based initiatives that rise to the challenge, uniting with NGOs and ministries to create networks of support.”

Haya el-Rawi, a member of the task force, said some people with disabilities lost caregivers, who were either killed or displaced. Others were unable to communicate after they lost access to the internet, she said.

“It all comes down to accessibility,” she said. “Not just physical accessibility, but also informational, so a person can be able to communicate.”

Rawi said the conflict also spotlighted the intersection between gender and disability, with reports of women with disabilities facing sexual harassment in shelters.

Ibrahim Abdallah, a visually impaired disability expert and member of the task force, said some people with disabilities were turned away from shelters because they did not have a guardian who could assume responsibility for them.

“Some people are physically handicapped ... but are independent and live away from their parents; (the shelters) turned them away and told them you cannot come alone,” he said.

Shorouk Chamas, whose 10-year-old daughter and four-year-old son both have cerebral palsy, had to flee her home in Beirut’s suburb of Ouzai. Both her children are paralysed and her son is mute.

But she considers herself lucky because organisers at the host community she fled to welcomed her children.

She also had support from her extended family: nine members of the family stayed in a single room in a school that was converted into a shelter in the mountain region of Hamana.

“Had I not had my family with me, my siblings and mother helping me out, I would have killed myself,” she said.

Chamas has a personal disability card that should entitle her to benefits for both children from the government and aid groups, but she said she never received anything from the state.

When the government issued its one-off $100 transfer her children missed out because the cards had not been renewed.

Now she has renewed the card and hopes to receive support but even though she has returned to her home, she still feels stuck in limbo.

She cannot afford to send her children to specialist private schools and she said scholarships and free places at state schools were only available to people who pay bribes or have personal connections to call on.

The struggles of people with disabilities during the war reflect the neglect they were facing even before the bombs started falling, Abdallah said.

“We have to have a sustainable plan that merges people with disabilities into all aspects of life,” he said. “Merging people with disabilities (into society) is much cheaper than making specialised programmes for disabilities.”

For Rawi, an opportunity now exists to use the post-war reconstruction to improve accessibility for people with disabilities across Lebanon.

“We need at least the basics,” she said. “The minimums like ramps, wide sidewalks with barriers ... this is a big chance for accessibility in reconstruction.” 

Thomson Reuters Foundation