It is displaced by the war. Most are in Lebanon, but anti-refugee sentiment is spreading there, as Arabic’s Carine Torbey writes from Beirut.
“We live in constant fear and anxiety,” adds Alia. “Every evening when my son comes back home, his youngest brother hugs him – relieved that he hasn’t been arrested” .
Three of the 43-year-old’s four children reside in Lebanon with their parents. They left from their home in Idlib, northern Syria, one year after conflict broke out in 2011.
With an estimated population of little over 5.3 million, Lebanon has the greatest percentage of refugees worldwide, with 1.5 million Syrians living there.
Although anti-refugee attitude is not new in the nation, it has grown dramatically in the past several years when Lebanon’s economic crisis began in 2019.
