WATCH THE WEBINAR
Regional Conferences Caritas Middle East and North Africa
Caritas at the crossroad of chaos, witnessing for justice, peace and hope
A webinar on the work of the Confederation in a region that faces many challenges and where Caritas is at the side of the population even in the most difficult contexts, building bridges of peace and bearing an important testimony of justice and hope.
Since October 2019, the country has been going through an economic, financial and sociopolitical crisis to which the COVID-19 pandemic and the explosion of August 4, 2020 in Beirut have been added. According to the World Bank, it is apparently among the 10, and more probably among the 3 most serious crises which have occurred in the world since the middle of the 19th century.
Today, the Lebanese are in a state of anger and rage, feeling incapable of dealing with the accumulation of all these problems. In addition to the growing number of suicides, violence and crimes, the psychological and mental situation of citizens is deteriorating day by day. Inflation is increasing every day. For an unchanged salary, prices have multiplied by 20 in less than 18 months, in a highly dollarized economy that is to say also dependent on external factors: imports, authorizations, and easily paralyzed by restrictions, external decisions and sanctions. For the first time since World War I, the Lebanese are experiencing hunger, starvation and humiliation. They had never experienced this, even during the worst years of the Lebanese war.
In a such deteriorated crisis and in order to prevent early drop-out, delinquency, and child labor Caritas strives for the education of disadvantaged children and learning disability. Caritas is providing financial, social and specialized support for approximately 294 000 children and more than 45 000 parents and caretakers. Caritas Lebanon plans to centralize and coordinate aid to Lebanon’s Catholic school network, which is in serious danger of disappearing.
Specific program as ‘The Programme Coordinator Education (PCE)’ is based in Beirut and tasked to lead the implementation of an education project in Lebanon to validate a teacher training model in close coordination with the competent Lebanese authorities for primary and secondary education. The PCE supervises the implementation of all relevant tasks related to the education program and particular its further development and expansion in Lebanon.
Caritas support education ongoing programs for Syrian refugee children as well. The crisis in Syria calls for new measures to ensure that affected children can enjoy their rights to protection and education despite the crisis. With the Regional Holistic Education Programme (RHEP) Caritas is able to support more than 10,000 children in Jordan and Lebanon since 2018.
“The rise in inequalities since the start of the country’s economic crisis has led to a large gap in access to quality learning among Lebanon’s children, to the detriment of the poorest,” Father Abboud, president of Caritas Lebanon, said. He added “Poverty is a major obstacle to children’s access to education since many families cannot afford to buy school materials or have to rely on their children’s work. Since October 2019, when social unrest shook Lebanon, school dropout has been massive.”