Phil Vine
Repairing ambulance stations and rebuilding the confidence of children. Two priorities for the Lebanese Red Cross, as the country begins its tentative recovery from war.
Since the guns stopped firing on 14 August, at 0500 hours GMT, the tens of thousands of people, who fled the fighting, have been finding their way home.
“During the conflict the majority of people affected were civilians and two thirds of them were women and children, ” says Knut Kaspersen from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Beirut.
Now the ceasefire is in place the Lebanese Red Cross is starting to run social programmes for children and parents.
“Children all over the south are traumatised and because their parents are also traumatised, they are not able to help them,” he says.
The LRC is planning psycho-social projects for children in Nabatieh, Marjeyoun in South Lebanon, the South Beirut suburbs and Bekaa.
They will be backed by the International Federation which has been working together with the LRC in this area for the last two years.
“We will be training volunteers how to work with children who survive such a crisis, how to encourage them to talk about what they’ve passed through and how to let them express their fear,” says International Federation delegate Doris Doueihy.
During the emergency operation, co-ordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, 2,400 volunteers from the Lebanese Red Cross risked their lives operating 200 ambulances around the clock.
One volunteer, 34 year old Mikhael Jbayleh, married with two children, died from aircraft gunfire, when he got out of his ambulance to help a wounded person.
In the course of the hostilities, ambulances and ambulance stations were badly damaged.
“One station was completely destroyed, there are six in total which need to be rebuilt, repaired or moved, because of where they are situated,” says Mr Kaspersen.
The Red Cross carries out 80 per cent of ambulance missions in Lebanon. Mr Kasperson hopes that people will see how critical these services are and will carry on supporting them.
Rebuilding work is going on across the south of the country. The Lebanese Red Cross reports that during the fighting 16,000 residential units were destroyed and 15,000 damaged.
Many of the families who have returned to their neighbourhoods are staying with friends or relatives, sometimes three, four or five families where normally one family would live.
More than six weeks after the fighting began, 1100 trained LRC youth volunteers continue to assist displaced people distributing hygiene packs, water and food.
We fled after the fighting in Ghaziyeh,” said Hiba one of the volunteers working in the Zahrani centre, “but we still worked in any way we could.”
The Red Cross volunteers have helped an estimated 150,000 people so far.
Actions which have earned them respect and admiration from the director of the Red Cross Youth Department, Thérèse Abdo:
“While facing many pressures and working under continuous bombing they managed to abide by one of our major principles, that of humanity.”
A thousand volunteers are now participating in a massive debriefing process, to try and ensure there is no more human damage.
“It’s a precautionary and preventive measure,” says Mr Kasperson. “We are also training the managers of the volunteers to recognise burnout.”
The Lebanese Red Cross has received helped from Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in numerous countries. That includes a thousand metric tonnes of supplies from societies in the region, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar the UAE and Libya.
Together with the ICRC, the International Federation is helping to develop the local logistics capacity of the Lebanese Red Cross to process this humanitarian aid.