The Syrian civil war marked a grim milestone on Wednesday as the number of people who have fled into Lebanon and registered as refugees surpassed one million, according to the United Nations Refugees Agency.
The spiraling conflict that began in March 2011 has killed at least 150,000 people and uprooted more than nine million others. An estimated 1.6 million of them are spread between Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. But it is fragile Lebanon that has by far taken the brunt.
One-quarter of the country’s residents are now Syrian, according to the U.N. There were almost 18,000 refugees in Lebanon in April 2012, about 13 months after the demonstrations, but that swelled to nearly 356,000 as the revolution turned into civil war. Now the organization registers 2,500 refugees each day.
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Lebanon’s generally open-door policy for Syrians has immensely strained the tiny country’s political and economic systems, as well as its overall stability. There’s less trade, tourism and investment. Many schools are at full capacity—520,000 of the million refugees are children, but of the 400,000 of them who are school-aged, only 90,000 are in classrooms—and its infrastructure is stretched thin.
Bombings along the border serve as a reminder that even those who leave Syria in search of safety or better opportunities aren’t guaranteed anything.
Syrian refugees line up to register or renew their registration at the UNHCR compound in Tripoli, in North Lebanon.Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSyrian refugees from the southern border areas gather in the village of Blat, in Marjaayoun, to be bussed to Tyre to register with UNHCR after arriving in Lebanon.Lynsey Addario—UNHCRAmar and Masrine, their sister-in-law Nahlah and her son Mazen, wait to cross the border in the Lebanese town of Aboudiyeh. Their bags are all they have left. “What saddens me is not losing things, but losing people,” says Amar. “My other sister-in-law was shot a year-and-a-half ago.”Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSyrians line up with their passports to enter Lebanon at immigration at the official border crossing in Masnaa, Lebanon.Lynsey Addario—UNHCRNafat, 45, from Homs, bakes bread outside her shelter in Turbide, Bekaa Valley. She has been in Lebanon for more than a year, and feeds her family of 13 every morning. “The bakery is too expensive,” she says. “I learned to bake by watching my neighbours."Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSeventy families live by the shell of an abandoned onion-processing factory, trudging through the mud in flip-flops. Many had to bail water from their tents after a rainstorm. They pay between US$50 and US$200 a month to live here in Faida, Bekaa Valley. Lynsey Addario—UNHCRFemale Syrian refugees dance around at a wedding celebration in a refugee camp in Marj El-Khokh, in Marjaayoun. The bride, Yousra, 16, (not shown) was marrying Ahmed, 21, from East Ghouta, Syria. The father of the groom spoke about the wedding "we want to create life out of death and from sadness we want to create happiness."Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSyrian refugee Ranya, 10, from the Idlib countryside, stands outside her family's room in the Nour resort, a collective shelter that houses roughly 500 Syrian refugees in Tripoli, in North Lebanon. Ranya and her family fled Idlib about one year ago after the bombing intensified. She has been out of school for three years.Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSyrian refugees from Aleppo and Idlib provinces live in the Ras al Ein collective settlement and informal tent camp in Tyre, Lebanon.Lynsey Addario—UNHCRFeryal, 29, gives water to Zacharia, her four-year-old son, in the apartment they live in in Halat. He is dying of cancer. In Syria, the trip to hospital became too dangerous. “I was afraid,” said Feryal. By the time they reached Lebanon, the cancer had spread to his brain, she says, adding: “I failed him.”Lynsey Addario—UNHCRManhal, aged nine, and Ahmed, 11, brothers from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, sell flowers by the sea in Byblos. They go to school by day, and work all evening. Their older brother doesn’t go to school at all. “I would if I could,” says Mohammed. “But who would help my father with the rent?”Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSyrian refugees from the Syrian village of Beit Jinn return from the Lebanese border town of Shabaa back across the mountains of Jabal al Sheikh into Syria. The wife and daughter-in-law of Mohammed Kablan, 56, (not shown) were tired of living as a family of refugees, and found Lebanon too expensive compared to Syria.Lynsey Addario—UNHCRA group of 110 refugees from Damascus live in an abandoned prison in Sawiri, Bekaa Valley. Strands of barbed wire hang from the balcony above. Some families live in the cells; others have built dwellings in the courtyard. Accommodation in Lebanon is hard to find. Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSyrian refugee, Khalid, 11, from Homs, tends to the family's goats at a tented settlement in Turbide in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. Lynsey Addario—UNHCRSyrian refugee Jalila Brahim, 48, from Abadhour village in the Idlib countryside washes clothes outside the Ras al Ein collective settlement and informal tent camp in Tyre, Lebanon. Brahim says: "Six hundred people died from our village around eighteen months ago. All of our houses are leveled. My eldest son disappeared over a year ago."Lynsey Addario—UNHCR
