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STORY: LEBANON / SYRIAN REFUGEES
TRT: 2:30
SOURCE: UNHCR
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/ARABIC/NATS
DATELINE: 10 NOVEMBER 2015, BATROUN, LEBANON
1. Wide shot, family eating thyme and drinking tea
2. Close-up, bowls of oil and thyme
3. Med shot, family drinking tea
4. Close-up, girl smiling
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fouad, refugee:
“I owe 750 dollars for the rent of the tent and about 300 dollars for other things.”
6. Wide shot, woman and children walking
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fouad, refugee:
“Most days I cannot pay the electricity bill so I borrow money from people in the camp to be able to pay that bill.”
8. Med shot, Fouad breaking wood with a hammer
9. Close-up, chisel being hammered into wood
10.SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fouad, refugee:
“Yesterday, the landlord sent us a list with the names of those who owe him rent. He told us we have to pay.”
11. Med shot, Fouad picking up the wood
12. Wide shot, Fouad going inside the tent
13. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fouad, refugee:
“I am ashamed of myself, I want to pay him. Even he doesn’t ask for money. He comes and tells me, you are not working?”
14. Close-up, tilt from lady’s face to baby
15. Wide shot, refugee camp
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Dana Sleiman, spokesperson, United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR):
“This vulnerability assessment shows that refugees today owe on average 842 dollars every month. A180 dollar increase from this time last year. They are indebted to friends, to relatives, to landlords, to shop owners and they are sinking deeper and deeper into these debt traps because humanitarian assistance is decreasing. Their resources are completely depleted four years or more into the crisis and they are simply unable to work legally in Lebanon so we are reaching a stage where refugees are deep into these vicious debt cycles and they are not able to pull themselves out of them.”
17. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fouad, refugee:
“When I first came here I had some savings from Syria. I had a car and some property that I sold. I used some of the money to come here and the rest I spent here.”
18. Close-up, tilt from Fouad in grocery store to items being scanned
19. Close-up, Fouad’s hand giving clerk payment for the bill
20. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fouad, refugee:
“My heart aches for my kids, I always got them what they wanted. Now they crave bananas or an apple. We can’t even afford a good meal.”
21. Wide shot, Fouad and his 2 daughters walking with grocery bags
Nearly 90 percent of the over one million refugees in Lebanon are caught in a vicious debt cycle, according to the findings of a recent assessment of Syrian refugee vulnerability by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Most of them have not managed to free themselves from debts that started to pile up in 2014. Today almost every refugee family’s monthly expenditures exceed its income by an average of USD 443.
Fouad, a Syrian refugee said, “I owe 750 dollars for the rent of the tent and about 300 dollars for other things. Most days I cannot pay the electricity bill so I borrow money from people in the camp to be able to pay that bill.”
He added that, “Yesterday, the landlord sent us a list with the names of those who owe him rent. He told us we have to pay. I am ashamed of myself, I want to pay him. Even he doesn’t ask for money. He comes and tells me, you are not working?”
Dana Sleiman, a spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) explained that, “This vulnerability assessment shows that refugees today owe on average 842 dollars every month. A180 dollar increase from this time last year. They are indebted to friends, to relatives, to landlords, to shop owners and they are sinking deeper and deeper into these debt traps because humanitarian assistance is decreasing. Their resources are completely depleted four years or more into the crisis and they are simply unable to work legally in Lebanon so we are reaching a stage where refugees are deep into these vicious debt cycles and they are not able to pull themselves out of them.”
Fouad added, “When I first came here I had some savings from Syria. I had a car and some property that I sold. I used some of the money to come here and the rest I spent here. My heart aches for my kids, I always got them what they wanted. Now they crave bananas or an apple. We can’t even afford a good meal.”
