Crisis in Lebanon: more and more inhabitants now find it difficult to eat
Audio 01:23
Under a white tent set up in a rather affluent district of Beirut, volunteers distribute hot meals to residents.
© Noé Pignède / RFI
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
“
Famine will increase in 20 countries in the next month.
This is the cry of alarm from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).
Countries including Yemen, Sudan, northern Nigeria and Lebanon.
The inhabitants of the land of the cedar, in the grip of an unprecedented economic and political crisis, are sinking into poverty.
Faced with the vertiginous fall of the Lebanese pound against the dollar and the explosion of prices in supermarkets, many Lebanese are now struggling to eat and turn to NGOs to survive.
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With our correspondent in Beirut,
Noé Pignède
Under a large white tent set up in a rather affluent district of the Lebanese capital, volunteers distribute hot meals to the inhabitants.
Women and men who, for the most part, had never asked for help from the association, as Shaima, one of the volunteers, explains.
“
We have people from very different social categories who come here,
” she says.
People who had never been seen asking for food, but who have no more money.
People of wealthy origin who are suffering from the financial crisis and are asking for our support
.
The Lebanese are not used to asking for help.
They are worthy and proud.
I never imagined seeing my compatriots one day queuing for food.
We have few donors and not enough money to help everyone.
It's a nightmare.
"
►
To read also: Faced with a record fall in the pound, the Lebanese express their despair and their anger
The Grassroots Lebanon initiative distributes nearly 200 hot meals a day.
On the menu today, pasta Bolognese that Joseph, 51, hastens to put in his bag.
“
I had five meals, it's for my family: four children and me and my wife.
My wife, she's in the hospital, she has cancer.
Before, me and my wife used to work.
My salary was $ 1,500, now my salary is $ 200, it's very hard to live with.
"
Like Joseph's family, nearly a quarter of the Lebanese population now lives in extreme poverty, on less than $ 2 a day.
►
Also to listen: Crisis in Lebanon: "The formation of a government appears to be a necessary first step"
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Lebanon
Poverty
Social issues
NGO