Syrian refugees throughout the Middle East facing even greater poverty

More Syrian refugees in the Middle East are falling into debt and facing poverty, partly as a result of exhausting their savings with shortages of essential aid worsening their plight, according to U.N. agencies and local governments.

Some 70 percent of refugees in Lebanon are living below the poverty line, compared with 50 percent in 2014. In Jordan, 90 percent of registered Syrian refugees in urban areas have fallen below the national poverty line, while more than 67 percent of families are living in debt.

Families have been forced to cut out meals, spend less on healthcare, borrow money, and pull children out of school and send them to work, the report said.

“…The specter of poverty [is] hanging over the Syrian refugee populations and host communities in the five countries that take the most refugees–Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan,” Leo Dobbs, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

[Reuters]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid by Grant Montgomery.