Hiba Ghandour, Programme Manager for MAG Lebanon, shares her experience of the recent conflict in her home country and how MAG is responding to the crisis.
Forced to flee my home amidst the relentless aerial bombardments in September, my family and I have finally returned to Lebanon, where I am now focused on playing my role in helping our country to recover and rebuild from devastating conflict.
Our family home in the south of the country is now just rubble – one of an estimated 100,000 homes to have been destroyed in a conflict that the World Bank estimates will cost $3.4bn in rebuilding alone.
And our community, like swathes of the rest of the country, is likely to be contaminated with the deadly legacy of explosive ordnance; we know that of the hundreds of thousands of rockets and shells that have been expended, a significant proportion will have failed to explode.
They will be buried in the ground, lodged in the rubble or littering the fields and olive groves. And each and every one of those potentially lethal items will have to be found and made safe as part of a painstaking and dangerous reconstruction operation that is essential for community recovery, economic growth and political stability.
Since the start of the conflict, my colleagues and I have been preparing for this ceasefire. Within 24 hours of its announcement, we began mobilising our response, including preparing heavy earth-moving machinery for deployment in the south of the country to assist the authorities in enabling access for humanitarian relief and infrastructure repair.
We have also been delivering additional explosive ordnance disposal training to our 200-plus staff and partners in anticipation of this moment, including in relation to the acute threat posed by highly incendiary and dangerous white phosphorus munitions.
But we know from our experience in Lebanon, where MAG has delivered landmine and UXO clearance for almost a quarter of a century, that the job ahead is huge and the legacy of this most recent conflict could be felt for years to come.
The first important step in this response is a significant scale-up of risk education for emergency and humanitarian workers, UN staff, other workers and returning residents so that they are aware of the dangers of UXO.
An estimated one million have been displaced by the conflict and many have already started to return to their communities. Lives and limbs will be lost unless they are made aware of the dangers they face. There is also an urgent need to conduct a rapid initial survey of affected areas to identify the nature and scale of the threat and to prioritise areas for a full survey of contamination and later clearance. This work has now begun.
Equally important will be to secure funding from the international community so that we can invest in the people and equipment, including heavy mechanical machinery, that will be required in the coming months and years.
Survey and clearance is both expensive and time-consuming. Factors such as the density and height of buildings, the type and scale of contamination, whether populations have returned or want to return and what other hazards might be present will all influence the pace of progress. In some areas there might also be asbestos and chemical hazards.
The rebuilding of Lebanon’s obliterated homes, hospitals and schools will be impossible unless the international donor community releases funding now, along with a pledge to sustain such funding for the foreseeable future.
Because the sooner we are able to survey, prioritise and commence the dangerous and difficult job of clearance, in partnership with the local community and with other humanitarian organisations, then the sooner we can enable safe passage for returnees, the reconstruction of essential infrastructure and the eventual normalisation of life. These are all essential ingredients for the political stability and peace that we crave and that can have a positive impact on the wider region.
From a personal perspective, I worry about my family, about how we can rebuild our home, about my community. But as a professional who works in humanitarian mine action, I also think of the steps we need to take to keep families safe and to ensure the swiftest possible recovery for the Lebanese people.
