Ain al-Hilweh Camp between Adherence and Indifference
Date: 
March 23 2020

The Market at the Ain al-Hilweh camp is considered a lifeline for many families. It combines a clothing market with a vegetable, fruit, and meats market. When quarantine began in Lebanon, movement in the camp remained the same, and the market stayed busy. People in the camp fear hunger and poverty more than they fear the coronavirus. This was clear when many ridiculed the pandemic, and laughed at anyone who mentioned it.

However, after days of heedlessness, the Palestinian Civil Defense organization asked families to stay home, called for closure of the Market, and forbade mass gatherings, all to preserve the safety of the camp and its people.

A group of youths in their 20s were asked about the Civil Defense’s measures. Some emphasized the importance of ensuring safety and taking necessary preventative actions including shutting the camp down, while others objected to the closure of shops and the Market. One of them sarcastically said: “They’re closing the [doors] to their livelihoods out of fear of dying from the virus; they think they were alive before the virus.”

UNRWA remained committed to its usual programs: hospitalization and environmental health. It contributed to sanitizing the camp neighborhoods in collaboration with volunteers from the Palestinian Civil Defense organization twice a week. UNRWA also launched a special education network for distance learning called “self-learning,” where students and teachers correspond five hours a day, in addition to providing a special program to each teacher. In applying a distance-learning program, the UNRWA has surpassed both private and public Lebanese schools.

A businessman from Sidon donated $10,000 to the Palestinian Civil Defense organization to strengthen sanitization operations in the camp and to support the voluntary effort of teams taking precautionary measures and trying to keep people safe. The Palestinian workers’ unions, Palestinian national security forces, and other parties supervised a number of groups in the camp  in the cleaning and sanitization of a number of neighborhoods in the camp. Additionally, some restaurant owners shut their businesses for sanitization purposes so they can remain open during the quarantine.

Civil society organizations coordinated awareness campaigns through hanging instructional flyers about prevention methods, while other organizations worked on distributing food rations and providing assistance to some medical cases in the camp. This was all done in an effort to encourage people to commit to rules of precaution and not to break the quarantine.

The economic crisis that began during the ongoing Lebanese revolution with the devaluation of the Lebanese Lira, the banking crisis, workers being laid off, the current health crisis and an increase in the prices of cleaning and medical supplies are some of the biggest problem facing families in the camp. Those problems persist, in addition to the high cost of food products, in the absence of any form of oversight on pricing of supplies and food products.

Many residents of the camp have complained about the economic situation and have asked business owners, electric generator companies, and property owners to freeze or reduce monthly rental expenses. Some owners of stores and homes refuse to do that because the only income they have is from their rentals. In addition, all income sources that organizations, humanitarian aid groups, and UNRWA usually provide have been delayed due to complications related to the operations of Lebanese banks and bank transfers.

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