United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly and Ninette Kelley, the Representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Lebanon, visited today a newly opened UNHCR centre in Tyre for the registration of Syrian refugees.
The centre is intended to help accelerate registration in south Lebanon, where over 60,000 people are currently registered or seeking registration. UNHCR already runs registration centres in north Lebanon, the Bekaa and Beirut.
In Tyre, Special Coordinator Plumbly and Ms. Kelley also met mayors and community leaders from across the south and discussed with them the needs of refugees in their areas and those of the communities hosting them. Earlier in the day Mr. Plumbly and Ms. Kelley visited Saida and met officials and community leaders there, as well as visiting collective shelters and meeting refugees there and in Zahrani.
At a meeting with the press at the end of their visit, Mr. Plumbly and Ms. Kelley praised the hospitality shown by the people of the south to the refugees and underlined the United Nations’ commitment to working closely with the authorities and with the communities themselves to help address them. Ms. Kelley said that local leaders had been clear as to the scale of the challenge the communities and the refugees faced. She said one of them talked of a “call for rescue” and such it is.
The two UN officials also underlined that, with more than 400,000 Syrian refugees already registered or seeking registration in Lebanon, such assistance was heavily dependent on the urgent disbursement of donor funds.“The scale of the burden is growing. More resources are needed to assist both the refugees and the communities hosting them,” Mr. Plumbly said. “The resources presently available do not come close to those needed to support all those in need.”
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