Shahed Organization for Human Rights has warned of a famine to strike Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, where the socio-economic situation has taken a turn for the worse.

SHAHED warned that the coronavirus crisis along with the decision issued by former Labor Minister against migrant workers in August 2018 and the recent Beirut explosion have made Palestinians’ situation far worse in the country.

SHAHED urged UNRWA to take up its legal and moral obligations towards the refugees, to launch pre-emptive responses to the imminent famine, to appeal to donors and the international community to increase their funds to the refugee agency, and to hold an international donor conference to that end.

According to information collected by UNRWA, more than 70 per cent of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon indicate that the Agency’s cash assistance is their main source of income. The majority of refugees are food insecure and live in poverty.

The lack of a valid legal status, often coupled with outdated civil registration documents, results in severely restricted freedom of movement for some Palestinian refugees in Lebanon due to fear of arrest, detention and being issued a departure order.