During his trip to Lebanon, Cardinal Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, visited a camp for refugees in Kfardlakos, Tripoli. There are fifty camps spread around the country, including this one in the Zgharta district of northern Lebanon. Eleven years after fleeing Syria, where life is even more tough, 125 individuals, 25 families, and more than 60 youngsters still suffer in substandard living conditions.
Every dollar that is received is consumed by the debt that the families accrue from purchasing food and other items from local stores. “What we have is debt. Fteim, a 50-year-old Syrian from Hana who has been in Lebanon since the war began in 2011, said. “We have water everywhere, above and below, but not to wash ourselves,” she added while speaking to the Cardinal beneath a tent with rain dripping down. “Our kids are filthy, lack clean clothes, and are unable to attend school as they are not permitted to board buses”, she continued. The ongoing emergency in Kfardlakos’ Camp 004 is mostly caused by a lack of food and the inability to survive in a stone cell with seven, eight, or even ten people—as was the case during the war—with rugs on the floor and walls and a tiny kitchen behind a curtain that doubles as a wardrobe. Other contributors include infections, a lack of electricity and water, and occasionally other factors.