21 November 2011
BEIRUT: A groundbreaking new study into the lives of Lebanon’s invisible poor was launched last Thursday at the American University of Beirut.
“Profiles of Poverty: The human face of poverty in Lebanon,” by Rupen Das and Julie Davidson, adds a narrative aspect to pre-existing studies of the country’s poorest, with the authors having traveled across all regions, conducting about 200 interviews.
With funding from World Vision and the Canadian Baptist Ministries, Das – director of community development at the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development – was inspired to write the book a couple of years ago.
A report from the U.N. Development Program had recently rated Lebanon’s poverty level at 28.5 percent, with 8 percent of those living in extreme poverty. About a month later, a visiting Malaysian donor, who had recently sponsored 10 Lebanese children, was driven to the airport, via Downtown and along the new road out of the city. He withdrew his sponsorship, deciding to donate to children living elsewhere.
“I really wanted to produce something to understand what poverty ‘is’ here,” Das told The Daily Star.
Coming from a charity background, Das explained that, “Our frustration with our donors is that they will see poverty in Africa, in Asia. But they don’t see it here, which is an unfair way of looking at poverty, as it is all relative.
“The numbers are out there,” Das said, but he wanted to discover “where they are and what they look like, so that when our donors say ‘show me,’ we can do it.”
The study provides an intricate expose of the causes behind much of the poverty in Lebanon, as Das writes in the introduction, “This study seeks to understand why a country with relatively good indicators at a national level still has significant pockets of poverty by examining the problem through the testimony of the poor themselves.”
Davidson explained that in each community, residents saw different factors behind their situations. “Some felt it was because of war, that they were constantly being displaced, being bombed,” she said, such as those living in Wazzani, in south Lebanon, “Victims of living on the border.”
In the book, a young woman from the region told researchers, “I am hoping for a more stable situation when people don’t fear growing crops or building because of war, where they won’t be afraid to buy cattle or do business, where they don’t fear that someone will come at night and destroy it like in 2000.”
In northern Lebanon, Davidson said, “residents thought there was isolation, government neglect: they felt they didn’t have access to services.”
Mareh in Akkar is still completely without government electricity, villagers having originally applied for the service in 1994, the book reveals, and residents are skeptical this situation will change any time soon. “One man cynically commented, ‘The chicken farms have electricity and we don’t have electricity. They are more served than we are,’” the book reads.
However, in general, Das and Davidson said, interviewees did not blame the state for their living conditions, but instead blamed individual politicians.
“Politics was always a big issue, and these communities found it hard as many didn’t identify with a particular political group, so they weren’t receiving help. Or they were just receiving bits of charity before elections,” Davidson explained.
Another main focus of the study is those without citizenship, communities not included within the UNDP’s poverty estimation of 28 percent: Palestinian refugees, migrant workers and some Bedouin and Dom, or Gypsy, people. The inclusion of these groups, Das believes, could up the poverty rate to some 40-45 percent.
The government is taking important steps to tackle poverty, Das said, citing the recent launch of the National Poverty Targeting Program, but, he added, “I just hope there are other steps along the way.”
If the downward spiral of poverty – caused by and resulting in exclusion, marginalization, voicelessness – is to be broken, social justice must become part of the national discussion, Das believes.
“They talk about security, about resistance, they talk about Lebanese identity ... but here you have at least 30 percent of people living in poverty” and it is not discussed.
At the launch of the book Thursday evening, Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour thanked the authors, and said it was now the responsibility of the Lebanese government to ensure the human rights of those living in poverty were ensured. “We have lost this sense of humanity,” he said, which must again enter the national consciousness.
Copyright The Daily Star 2011.
