As their country’s civil war drags on, thousands of Syrian families continue to flee the incessant violence for safety in neighboring countries. Yet in many places where they have taken refuge, the struggle to survive remains a daunting challenge.

As of January 17, more than 650,000 Syrian refugees throughout the region had either registered with United Nations officials or have their registration pending, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. More than one-third of those were in Lebanon, where a total of 212,445 refugees have already registered or begun the registration process with UNHCR.

Those numbers don’t include everyone, however. Some refugees, unsure of the political landscape, have tried to keep a low profile.

“We haven’t registered yet because when we arrived, we were warned that if we did so, we wouldn’t be able to return to Syria, and we thought we’d be here for just a short time,” said a woman whose family lives in a makeshift tent at the edge of the Bekaa Valley town of Jeb Jennine. She asked not to be identified, saying they had crossed the border into Lebanon without presenting any papers, and now feared deportation.

“Yet now when we call UNHCR to try to make an appointment, they don’t answer the phone. And you’ve got to talk to them on the phone to begin the process. Our neighbors who registered have received vouchers for food and warm things for winter, but we haven’t. We had to borrow a blanket from another family for our children, and at night we just sleep closely together to stay warm,” she said.

Humanitarian needs amidst fractious politics

The refugees are also difficult to count in Lebanon because the government has resisted building large camps for them as in Turkey and Jordan. Instead, most Syrian refugees here are staying with friends or relatives, or renting space in crowded buildings or rustic encampments.

Formal refugee camps are a non-starter in Lebanon, where a sizable population of Palestinian refugees has lingered in “temporary” camps since 1948. The presence of armed factions among these Palestinians contributed to the 1975-90 civil war. And many Lebanese have resisted the assimilation of the Palestinians, who are mostly Sunni, in order not to upset the fragile sectarian balance in their own country.

With Lebanon’s political culture closely linked to Syria’s political factions, no one wants to import the violence that has torn apart cities like Homs and Aleppo. At the same time, there’s broad support for a humanitarian response to the families fleeing the civil war. That tension creates a delicate political balancing act.

“There’s a power struggle in Lebanon, and nobody can agree on something like this,” said George Antoun, the Beirut-based Middle East regional director for International Orthodox Christian Charities, a member of ACT Alliance. “Lebanon doesn’t control its borders, and it has a long and porous border with Syria. People fear a refugee camp might become a base for Syrian militants, or a place that could be attacked by a certain faction within Lebanon, and that would create conflict. It would be hard to prove who attacked the camp, and it could bring Lebanon back to civil war.”

With no change in sight in Syria’s protracted war, refugees will continue to flow across the border. UN officials say Lebanon will have 425,000 Syrian refugees by June. As more refugees arrive, their needs for living space and services will put the country’s capacity to host them to an even greater test. That’s why Lebanon appealed to the Arab League for $180 million in emergency aid during a meeting in Cairo on January 13. The Arab League agreed to dispatch a fact-finding team to study the situation.

The ACT Alliance response

Working with UN agencies and other members of ACT Alliance, the IOCC is assisting the Syrian refugees with blankets, heaters and winter clothing. The organisation also works inside Syria in cooperation with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East to deliver emergency relief items, as well as provide critical psychosocial support to families struggling to survive the harsh winter.

In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, the IOCC has provided 2,000 expectant mothers and women who recently gave birth with special personal care kits filled with important basics that are often forgotten and difficult to ask for in a society where women’s needs are not discussed. Each “dignity kit” contains feminine hygiene products and personal care items such as bath towels and new undergarments.

“Providing protection and humanitarian assistance to vulnerable groups such as women with young children is integral to our ongoing relief efforts,” said Mark Ohanian, the IOCC director of programs. “They need someone to support their well-being so that they can continue to support their families.”

**Article by Paul Jeffrey

It looks like any other school yard, any other school day. But it is actually the first school day in Camp Mbere, a refugee camp only a few kilometres from the Malian border in Mauritania. Suddenly a camera attracts the attention and hundreds of children sets of, screaming and laughing. Like any other children.

When Kasongo Mutshaila makes his way through the ocean of screaming children, he can´t help it but laughing. As being the representative in Mauritania Kasongo is heading the ACT Alliance LWF work camp management in camp Mbere.  And he is proud.

“I am so grateful to all our staff working at the front line. It’s a high level of sacrifice on their part”, Kasongo says trying to drown out the laughing children. He says this is a risky environment considering the terrorist attacks in the region.

“The passion and commitment I can see here is stunning”, he says.

A safe haven in dire need of support

Clashes in Mali between Tuareg rebels and the army have left more than 60,000 people internally displaced and a similar number have fled to Mauritania and neighbouring countries. Camp Mbere receives in average more than 1,000 refugees per day, some days even more. In the middle of April the camp is hosting over 55,000 people, more than half of them children.

To Kasongo Mutshaila the numbers are all about needs. The daily rising influx of fleeing people means a constant gap between resources and needs. The needs are extremely urgent and vast, he underlines. With so many people sharing the same area, pressure on already stretched resources are enormous. Health and sanitation, water and food are absolute necessities and at the same time all relying on assets. Assets that simply are not there.

But to Kasongo, the solution is obvious. “We have to down-size the camp” he says. “We are already projecting a population of 80,000 refugees and diving the camp in two gives us the huge advance of easier logistics, less risk of spreading infections and a safer environment.” He has taken up the matter with the head of UNHCR but says that the Mauritanian government might be reluctant at first considering the security and the fight against terrorism.

Experienced aid worker

At Camp Mbere the Lutheran World Federation in Mauritania is head of camp management. That means coordinating all the NGOs working in the camp, analyzing the needs and rescourses, providing the refugees with information and building tents according to all applicable standards.

“Yes, it’s a huge responsibility we have. Besides all the physical practicalities we also need to make the mental situation bearable for the refugees. We need to start giving them psychosocial support to make the day somewhat normal in this abnormal situation”, Kasongo says smiling.

Kasongo knows what he is talking about. He has been an aid worker for almost 15 years. He has headed camps for refugees from Darfur and Rwanda in Congo and Chad, camps 5 times the size of Mbere.

A deepening food crisis is taken its toll

But the fighting in Mali is not the only issue of attention. The UN World Food Program says an early warning about a foreseen famine in Sahel was not followed by an early response.

It is not famine yet, but only rapid action would prevent further deterioration of the food security situation and avoid a full-scale crisis.

Kasongo says that LWF Mauritania, the only ACT Alliance member in the country, is implementing an appeal to assist the drought affected population in Mauritania and Senegal.

The need for sustainable, structural solutions to food insecurity has helped shape ACT’s response to previous years’ crises and will continue to do so as this new humanitarian episode unfolds. ACT is working not only to provide immediate food aid, but also to help people hit by the crisis provide for themselves over the long term.

Fatumata, 28, knocks the leaves of a thorny tree with a long metal pole and picks them up off the dry and dusty ground one by one. “We normally only feed these leaves to our animals,” she explains, “but the situation is so difficult now that we are eating them ourselves.”

When asked if there is any nutrition in them she shrugs. “No, but we don’t have any choice. It’s an obligation. It’s all there is.”

Fatumata is from Tinakoff in northern Burkina Faso, a village like hundreds of others across the region that have experienced zero harvests. The latest humanitarian reports state that 1.6 million people in the country are in need of food aid.

The rains came late last year and when they arrived they were pitiful. Months of toil in the searing Sahelian heat came to nothing. “There are no crops and no pasture for the animals,” explains Elmamoune eg Fereby Baye, the village chief. “This is the worst experience we have had since I was village chief. It’s the worst experience I have lived through.”

“The animals are hungry and skinny so we can’t sell them, so we don’t have any money to buy any food. It’s all about animals here. If the animals are not in good health, then neither are we.”

Elmamoune fears for the well-being of his villagers: “It’s very, very difficult, very worrying, to such an extent that I can’t sleep.”

Tahya Wellet Etawantaw, 30, is also having sleepless nights. “We used to have 50 animals and now we have nothing,” she explains wearily. “I have to rely on my neighbours to feed my children. If they have nothing, they don’t eat. Or I go out to beg for food that I can come home and cook.”

Tahya’s eight-year old daughter Sohat is suffering from small pox, but she can’t take her to the health centre as she has no money to pay for any treatment. Her husband lingers outside the house listening to the conversation, but he refuses to come and speak with us. “He is a Peulh herdsman,” says Aisseta Kabré, resilience officer for Christian Aid, a member of ACT Alliance. “it is very difficult for him to admit to anyone that he no longer has any animals.”

The current situation in northern Burkina Faso represents a perfect storm for an acute food crisis. People were still recovering from the drought in 2010 when the rains failed last year. And the poor harvest has contributed to exhorbitant food prices.  A cereal trader in the northern town of Gorom Gorom explained how a 100kg bag of millet (a staple crop in Burkina) had almost doubled in price from 14,500 cfa (£18) this time last year to 27,500 cfa (£34).

The conflicts in neighbouring Ivory Coast and Libya have also had a profound effect. “After animals, people here depend on the Ivory Coast to earn a living,” explained Elmamoune. According to a World Bank report, remittances from Ivory Coast go to a third of households in Burkina Faso, especially the poorest, and are the most significant migration flows in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. As a result of both conflicts 420,000 migrants have returned to Burkina Faso.

Akmoudou, Fatumata’s husband was one of them. He went to work in the Ivory Coast to earn money for his family and was doing well with fishing and building activities but that all changed when civil war broke out in 2010.

“During those times we went five days without eating, we couldn’t go out of the house,” he explains. “Many of my friends died. I managed to escape and came back here.” Someone paid for him to get from Abidjan to Ouagadougou but he had to sell a cow to pay for him to travel the 280 km home from the capital.

He adds: “I’m a poor person here now. There is no work. There is nothing. In the dry season we plant and there’s no rain, there’s nothing, it’s poverty.”

The village chief explained how it was so bad in Tinakoff (6km from the Malian border) that herders started to leave for Mali to find pasture, but because of the violence there involving the Touaregs, Malians were fleeing to come to Burkina Faso.

People in northern Burkina are welcoming their troubled visitors, but it is becoming more and more difficult, especially as people are coming with their cattle, putting extra pressure on the already scarce or non-existent pasture. Fearing conflict, the Burkinabé government has deployed helicopters to monitor the situation on the border.

All of these contributing factors means that this current crisis in Burkina Faso is much worse than the one in 2010 and is perhaps one of the worst in history.

Cristina Ruiz of Christian Aid who is currently overseeing an emergency food distribution in the north of the country said: “It’s not unusual for people to experience malnutrition in Burkina Faso and to use coping mechanisms like eating one meal a day or food that is usually only meant for animals, but that normally happens a lot later.”

She concluded that: “If we don’t react soon there could well be a famine situation all over northern Burkina Faso in April. People cannot stand more than two months in this situation.”

Days later, The Alliance for Technology Development Assistance, supported by Christian Aid, started distributing emergency food, seeds and cash for work to over 54,000 people in the north of the country. And Akmoudou, Fatumata, Tahya and their children will be among the first to benefit.