LEBANON Hunger will kill children in Lebanon by year's end, charity says

[Victoria33]

Hunger will kill children in Lebanon by year's end, charity says

Close to a million people in Beirut can no longer afford basic necessities, Save The Children reports. The effects of the economic crisis are worsening, with the local currency losing 80 per cent of i

www.asianews.it

LEBANON Hunger will kill children in Lebanon by year’s end, charity says​

AsiaNews.it

Close to a million people in Beirut can no longer afford basic necessities, Save The Children reports. The effects of the economic crisis are worsening, with the local currency losing 80 per cent of its value. The crisis has hit everybody – Lebanese families as well as Palestinian and Syrian refugees alike.

Beirut (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Close to a million people in Beirut can no longer afford basic necessities and children are likely to starve to death this year, Save The Children reported on Wednesday.

According to the charity, 910,000 people in Greater Beirut, more than half of them children, no longer have access to sufficient food because of the economic crisis.

“We will start seeing children dying from hunger before the end of the year,” said Jad Sakr, acting country director of Save the Children in Lebanon.

Someone, maybe the UN, ws already saying children are dying because of the economic crunch caused by the pandemic. Here it is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...d349ca-d059-11ea-826b-cc394d824e35_story.html

 

[Pattylt]

The horror that all Lebanese are enduring right now is atrocious! The government has wiped out their middle class. Inflation is through the roof and most can’t even afford meat anymore. This is a country with an odd political structure that was formed after their civil war years ago and was always destined to fail…and it is now failing.

So many people don’t know or understand Lebanon. It’s in the Middle East but not a Muslim only country. It houses two different sects of Muslims, Christians (Maronite Catholics mostly) and Druze as well as some others. It has mountains and it snows there. You can go to the beach and a mountaintop in the same day. The cuisine is outstanding.

Right before Covid hit, a multi religious group began a revolution that helped start the chain of events…which Covid exasperated even further. The government siphons off too much money and it’s corruption is well known. The IMF is willing to help if the powers in charge will agree to reasonable terms…the government is so busy trying to stab each other in the back and assure their own profits, they can’t even agree on changing a thing. They suffer 12 hrs a day with no electricity, in summer, and people are dying of heat stroke!

I hope @Salibi joins in to explain further how much the Americans and EU need to put pressure on the government there! He’s living in it!

 

[Salibi]

The crisis isn’t just limited to Beirut but is affecting all Lebanese regions. Half the country has slipped under poverty line. We’re facing a triple crisis, what with the pandemic, the economic collapse, and the political showdown between the pro-West and pro-Iran political camps.

Lebanese were already struggling before the pandemic but the lockdown has made everything worse. Lebanon’s government cannot be relied on to enact any semblance of reform since they are a clique of former warlords from the Civil War (1975-1990) that have been ruling Lebanon for the past thirty years. They’ve run the country almost like a private enterprise-billions of taxpayer dollars have been siphoned into politicians’ pockets and investments in infrastructure and development are non-existent. The Lebanese government isn’t raising a finger to save their own country because that would require dismantling the complex system of corruption and patronage that they’ve built up over the past thirty years and which analysts have been warning is untenable and will lead to eventual collapse for years. The upheaval wrought by the pandemic merely sped things up, but it was inevitable.

The IMF, the West and the Gulf have pledged huge aid packages to not only save but develop Lebanon, but are rightly refraining from sending them now before the Lebanese government enacts reforms and curtails Iran’s influence. That won’t be happening as the current Lebanese government is mostly pro-Iran. They were installed a few months ago against the will of the Lebanese people, who blocked roads and demonstrated in the capital (I was there) to prevent Parliament from meeting to install them. We failed because they, to use the colloquial expression, beat the cr*p out of demonstrators and forced their way to the Parliament in heavily armored military vehicles.

The situation is untenable and there doesn’t seem to be any way out without some major development in the region. Lebanese are living on a day-by-day basis-any long term planning is currently impossible and many of the youth have no idea how we’re going to afford college tuition next semester. This is another crisis in the making; the majority of Lebanese students attend private schools since the public schools are garbage and with the crisis many can no longer afford to do so. Public schools are underdeveloped and underfunded and cannot absorb all the students transferring from private to public education.

 

[Pattylt]

It seems like the people’s revolution must win in getting the leadership out. The corruption must end somehow and since they’re unwilling to give up their power and money grabs, then they must be overthrown…as horrible as that sounds, it’s the better outcome.

The youth of the country aren’t interested in the religious leadership divisions. The current government has mandatory representations of each House (a kind of religious political party) that was established after their civil war. They aren’t representing the people at all. They exist to siphon off money from the people…no wonder their money system collapsed. The leadership was depending on each religion not crossing lines…which the young are now doing. They are saying they are no longer Maronite or Muslim or Druze, but instead are saying they are Lebanese and for all the Lebanese people regardless of their faith. They want a western style government, not an Iranian one. They’ve been a puppet state so many times throughout their history and they are finished with being beholden to others. It’s time for them to decide their own future.

 

[Salibi]

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War the warlords established a new constitutional system based on consensual power-sharing between different Lebanese factions that they claimed was designed to prevent another war. What it really did was further divide an already divided nation by officially breaking up the Lebanese people into legally-recognized factions (Lebanese: tawayef) each with its own warlord-turned-leader claiming to represent the tayfe’s (singular form of tawayef) interests. It was just a nation-wide ruse for these warlords to maintain their power and escape accountability for the pogroms and massacres they committed during the Civil War.

Lebanon has always been multiethnic and ethnic supremacism is a huge problem, especially with the current leadership. The new constitutional system recognized 18 different ethno-religious groups in the country. This map shows the major ones.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

The Lebanese people are currently demanding an end to this constitutional system as it has divided us and prevented us from moving past the Civil War; the government, which derives great personal profit from the system, refuses to enact reforms.