Sharon Waxman, Vice President, Public Policy and Advocacy at the International Rescue Committee writes about Lebanon for the Huffington Post.
“On June 7, the United Nations launched its largest humanitarian appeal in history: $5.2 billion to aid people affected by the Syrian civil war. It may surprise some that the U.N. is seeking the lion's share (32 percent) of that money for one small country — Lebanon — but numbers tell the story.
A country of 4.2 million people, Lebanon now hosts more than 500,000 Syrian refugees, and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) expects that number to double by the end of the year. At that point, nearly one in five people in Lebanon will be a Syrian refugee. If we consider everyone affected by the conflict — the 1.2 million Lebanese in the communities struggling to absorb the Syrian refugees, plus the 80,000 Palestinian refugees and 49,000 Lebanese who had been living in Syria — the staggering figure would exceed 2.25 million, about half the prewar population of Lebanon.”