FOver the past 10 days or so, Farah Salga and her staff and volunteers at the Lebanese Anti-Apartheid Organization have responded to thousands of desperate messages from women who have nowhere to hide but the bombs. Salka's work as head of Lebanon's Anti-Apartheid Movement (Arm) involved advocating and campaigning for Lebanese rights before the Israeli airstrikes began. 400,000 migrant workers.
Now, she and her team have become frontline humanitarian workers, struggling to find shelter and safety for foreign domestic workers from countries like Ethiopia and Sierra Leone.
“Frankly, the situation faced by many of the migrant workers we support was dire before the start of the bombing of Lebanon, but now we see women who came to do domestic work thrown out onto the street like used washing machines. “Lebanese employers have been thrown into homes as they flee danger, or on the roadside to fend for themselves in the war-torn country, where many do not speak the language,” he says.
Aerial bombardments by the Israeli government in recent weeks have led to a massive internal displacement in southern Lebanon. With 1.2 million people – about 20% of the population – forced to flee their homes and communities and seek shelter elsewhere.
Hundreds of migrant workers and refugees have been left homeless, with no access to food or health care, as displaced people have flocked to the capital, Beirut, seeking refuge from bombings in the city's southern suburbs, frontline workers say.
In Beirut's Martyrs Square, groups of migrant workers sleep in the open, some on thin mattresses on the floor, others in makeshift shelters built from what can be found on the streets.
“Amidst the chaos of migration, we see large numbers of migrant workers, including many women, completely isolated, helpless and excluded from the formal system. Shelters because they are not Lebanese and sleep on the streets without protection. There is no way they can go home,” says Salka.
Last week the UN converted 900 government schools across Lebanon into shelters and are already full. Those who failed to secure space have sought refuge with friends and family or sheltered in abandoned houses, hotels or empty nightclubs.
Yet groups like Arm are trying to help many who are getting nowhere.
In the shadow of the blue domes of the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque, a wire frame designed to hold the square's Christmas tree has been draped in black and white banners emblazoned with the words “Beirut will never die” and turned into a people's tent. To huddle down.
“This guy is from Sudan and we are all from Bangladesh. There, all those women are from Syria,” says Raju Mirija, a Bangladeshi migrant worker, pointing to a dozen women sitting on blankets in the center of the square. Mirija says she fled a southern suburb of Beirut with a group of other Bangladeshi migrant workers a week ago after an Israeli airstrike near their home.
“A big explosion – we were all scared. Everyone ran to the street and then found their way here. At least here it's kind of a safe zone,” he says.
Mirija and a group of other Bangladeshi workers from Sudan, their suitcases piled near a gas canister. They say they have no hope that their government will expel them to their own country, which is in the grip of violent civil conflict.
In the square, Jamile Begum, a Bangladeshi domestic worker, says she and other workers did not try to find shelter after migrant workers were told shelters would be open to Lebanese nationals. only
“I was working as a domestic worker,” says Begum, adjusting her red and blue checkered scarf and clutching a backpack. But now we have run out of money. We don't want to come [to Beirut]But we had to flee.
Begum says she and others sleeping in the square rely on food donations from volunteers and charities that are scrambling to help those in makeshift camps that have sprung up across the city.
Salka says: “Small frontline teams and volunteers, many of them women, are carrying out this disaster response on the ground. The work they do is amazing but they are Tired, they are scared . Nothing we do is sustainable, there is zero support from those who are forced to provide it and the overall picture is very bleak.
A woman coordinating humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees, who did not want to be named if it has affected her work, says the situation in the Syrian refugee community is “frustrating”.
“For the past few weeks, we have been trying to help those who can come across the border. But now the route is becoming more dangerous and we have heard reports of people who have turned back being arrested,” he says.
“Syrians here in Beirut, survivors of the internal civil war and the bombing of Aleppo, are shocked by what is happening. They are not allowed into shelters and face hostility on the streets. They have no way to feed themselves or their families,” he says. “We are trying to tell them that everything will be fine, but we fear that this is only the beginning.”
