A fleet of tuk-tuks do business in Galkayo, bringing the promise of better times for the small teams of displaced people who maintain and drive them. (Photo: UNHCR)

Mohamed Issa Hussein, a budding entrepreneur in Galkayo’s Halabokhad settlement for forcibly displaced people, has seen better days. Forced to flee his home along the Somali-Ethiopian border with his wife and seven children three years ago, it has been a tough journey rebuilding his life far from home.

After arriving in Halabokhad in northern Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region, Mohamed, desperate to give his children a healthy present and a better future, tried his hand at all sorts of jobs – from shoe-shining in Galkayo to running a small shop.

“I could not bear watching my children crying from hunger,” he said, “So I did anything to feed them and buy them medicine if they fell sick.” He even tried his hand at growing onions and tomatoes for sale in Galkayo. But, as he recalled, the transport costs were crippling: “The earnings were not worth all the effort.”

So he started looking for other opportunities and, ironically, it was transport that offered the promise of a decent income rather than a drain on his resources. Mohamed applied to join a UNHCR project launched last month and aimed at providing an income for internally displaced people (IDP) while making it easier for people to travel to and from Halabokhad.

UNHCR provided 11 tuk-tuks, the three-wheeled motorized rickshaws common in developing nations. Each vehicle was to be maintained and operated by four IDPs, who would pocket any money made from passengers. The “team” members included drivers, like Mohamed, as well as mechanics, who have been provided with the use of two garages with basic spare parts.

The refugee agency is also providing fuel and oil for the first month as well as paying three-month registration fees for the vehicles and operators. After that, they are on their own.

“I’m very grateful. This extra income will really help my family,” said a delighted Mohamed, while adding: “My team and I will have to come up with a plan on how to run our new business, especially in sharing profits.”

The project ties in with UNHCR’s goal of helping displaced people become self-sufficient in their host areas and ensuring they become well integrated with the local communities. Another important consideration is adequate shelter and access to basic services, including medical care and education.

Bruno Geddo, UNHCR’s representative to Somalia, welcomed the tuk-tuk project, which he said was very important to the people of Halabokhad because it provided regular and cheap transport links with Galkayo.

“The tuk-tuks will also be a source of income for the operators, while enabling others to move easily to do business in the city,” he noted. “From now on, we don’t consider these people as displaced. They are Somalis among Somalis, living as equal citizens under the protection of the local community. It is a problem solved; a point of closure.”

The introduction of tuk-tuks will also be welcomed by women and girls in the IDP settlement because the a cheap and reliable, if small, new transport system will make it easier and safer for them to travel within Halabokhad or to Galkayo, where assault and rape can be a problem.

Saafiya, a single mother of seven, said she spends many hours every day walking to Galkayo in search of work while her children remain at home. She cannot afford to pay for a taxi.

“The only way I can earn a living is by doing small jobs in the town,” she said. “I have seen young girls being harassed by boys on the road, especially if it is late. Others tell us they were beaten and raped, with no one to defend them.”

She said the tuk-tuks “will keep us safe and also help us to get back home in good time to our children. Maybe one day, I can also learn how to drive and have my own tuk-tuk.”

Established in 2010, Halabokhad is one of 21 IDP sites in Galkayo, which collectively host about 60,000 displaced Somalis. More than two decades of conflict, together with periodic droughts, have devastated Somalia and left millions forcibly displaced.

By Faith Kasina in Galkayo, Somalia

A Sudanese refugee mother treats her severely malnourished child, who is also suffering from diarrhoea, in the stabilization center of Bunj Hospital, Maban County, South Sudan this month. (Photo: B. Sokol/ UNHCR)

Haram Yakub, 25, sits on a hospital bed holding her infant daughter to her breast. After more than a week of being unable to keep anything down due to diarrhoea, 11-month-old Nancy begins to feed.

Watching Nancy rally in South Sudan’s Yusif Batil camp is a relief. But Yakub’s trauma remains. It is a fear so powerful that she can only remember little things; that she was once a farmer in her hometown of Jam in Sudan’s Blue Nile state. She remembers that Nancy has been receiving treatment for eight days in the hospital’s stabilization centre.

At the camp’s play centre, a young girl dances with her friends, singing about how the people of her village in Sudan had to flee the conflict. Suddenly, she grows weak and faints.

She has had a thorn in her ankle since she made the journey across the Sudan-South Sudan border several months ago. The leg is infected and bright yellow puss can be seen underneath her skin. She too suffers from diarrhoea. Nearby, a teacher brings her child with her to class. The baby is also recovering from the ailment. The teacher gives her water mixed with oral rehydration salts.

At a mobile health clinic, health workers take the weight and height of children. Many show symptoms of malaria, others are malnourished or with diarrhoea. Some have all three. Some of the clinic staff as well as workers with UNHCR and other organizations are also suffering from the dangerous health condition.

A few weeks ago, UNHCR accomplished the challenging task of moving 32,000 refugees from the Sudan border to this camp under appalling conditions. Now the agency is working vigorously to combat a serious health crisis.

With the onset of the rainy season, the refugee agency and its partners have been keeping an eye open for outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, cholera and viral hemorrhagic fever. The nutritional status of the refugees at Yusif Batil is weak and preparations are being made to head off a cholera outbreak.

An army of 200 alert community health workers go house to house while a hospital dedicated to the treatment of cholera has been set up with the capacity to accommodate as many as 300 beds. Two more facilities with a capacity for up to 50 beds are also ready to go. More than 20 stations have been set up to provide oral rehydration salts for diarrhoea patients.

About 60 per cent of Yusif Batil’s 34,000 refugees are children. And 40 per cent of those aged under five years suffer from some form of malnutrition. As many as 15 per cent of this age group are severely malnourished. Meanwhile, the mortality rate for people aged over 50 years of age in the camp is 4.7 per 10,000 per day – nearly five times the normal rate.

“We have a vulnerable population with a lot of external threats,” says Maria Pillar, a doctor with UNHCR. “We need to create a health system for them in a very short period. We need time. But they don’t have time.”

Rain is also an enemy. It keeps people from fetching clean water, from going to health posts, from attending school. Puddles of water are breeding grounds for malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Children who are moderately malnourished catch a cold and are too weak to combat disease.

There is an urgent need to increase food rations in both quantity and quality to rebuild the health of those who have arrived over the past several weeks. “The refugees need a bigger amount of calories in a smaller amount of food,” as Pillar puts it.

UNHCR has made the distribution of food and other nutritional items its number one priority. The World Food Programme has prepared for blanket distributions of a vitamin-fortified corn/soy blend. Additionally, a series of airlifts of critical foods has been planned.

On a recent sweltering Wednesday morning almost 20 kilometres from Yusif Batil, a cargo plane lumbers over an open field filled with grass and drops its UNHCR cargo – 36 tonnes of cereals. It is a lifesaver for the tens of thousands of refugees in Yusif Batil and Doro, the other large refugee settlement in Maban County.

To help children, the health and nutrition agencies are providing a series of food supplements, handed out on the basis of malnutrition levels. One supplement, called “plumpy supplement, will be provided for all moderately malnourished children under five years of age in the camp. A second, called “plumpy nut,” is being provided to severely malnourished children.

“It’s important when we’re giving out these items that we observe people eating it,” says Brendan Dineen, public health officer with UNHCR. “These items need to be consumed by the malnourished child and not shared among family.”

The effort to control disease also includes a scaled up distribution of mosquito nets, sleeping mats and blankets. A child who is warm stands less chance of catching cold. An elderly woman with netting has some protection against malaria. A total of 16,000 mosquito nets, 14,000 blankets and 7,100 blankets have been distributed.

As part of its health drive, UNHCR is also working to increase water availability. In Yusif Batil, about nine litres of water are consumed on average per day. Specialist agencies are working with UNHCR to establish a water supply and distribution network across the camp. “If you have to walk a kilometre to carry 40 kilos of water [as many people do] and you have a puddle in front of your home, you might choose the puddle,” said Dineen. “We’re working to increase access to drinkable water.”

In the best of worlds, the camp would have one latrine for every four families, or 20 people. Right now, the ratio of latrines to population is approximately 1 for 28 people. To address this issue, some 700 trench latrines have been constructed around the camp. Additionally, some 300 family latrines have been constructed.

Water and sanitation have been coupled with a series of messages about washing hands, using facilities and drinking clean water. “The community in Batil is talking about hygiene,” said Dineen. “In that way they are becoming the cause of their own cure.”

By Greg Beals in Yusif Batil Camp, South Sudan

These sisters found each other via the Refugees United family tracing platform after 16 years of separation.

Today is World Refugee Day, where we pause and reflect upon the fact that there are 43 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, struggling to survive, make a living, or resettle within the country that they’ve had to flee to.

Of the millions of refugees that have fled their country or hometown within their own country, many thousands remain separated from their family members, with whom they lost all contact during flight.

Do you know where all your family members are? Can you pick up the phone and call your loved ones today? If you can, do so – and think about the thousands of people that do not have this possibility. They might be sitting in a shelter in a refugee camp, surrounded only by strangers, and thinking of whether they might one day get lucky enough to hear the voices of their loved ones again.

Today, we would like your help to spread awareness about how we can use modern technologies available to us to reconnect those many broken families. Right now, Refugees United is helping more than 135,000 people in search of missing family members via our free online, mobile-enabled family tracing platform, developed in partnership with our main technology partner Ericsson and supported by on-ground outreach partners likeUNHCR, Kenya Red Cross, and Intersos. And we are reconnecting people at a greater pace every day. Read the story of two Congolese sisters (picture) reconnected here.

Share this newsletter with your friends and family and share our Facebook page with your network. The more people we reach, the more people we have a chance of reconnecting.

Thank you for your support!

Refugees United

Today, the world is marking World Refugee Day in honor of the 43 million refugees living across our planet. In honor of the millions of women, men and children who have been forced from their homes and had their future thrust into a state of uncertainty.

In reality, what we’re recognising is the resilience of human nature, the undefeatable spirit of those who push through unimaginable terrors just for the chance to live. Not to conquer the world, not to build lavish lifestyles, but simply just to unpack their lives from tattered plastic bags into a footprint of dignity over which they can build a roof and settle in to live.

And dignity is the true shelter of any man, woman or child. Without it, you may build a world around any body, but the soul will not call it home. It takes the building blocks of self to create a structure that will support a life worth living.

Another cornerstone that supports a life worth living is family. Without knowledge about the health, safety and whereabouts of those you may have given life to, or who have given life to you, the desire to pursue a better existence diminishes until it disappears. For those hundreds of thousands of refugee families who have been separated, uncertain about the fate of family members, it is a race against time and a race towards hope.

The sole mission of Refugees United is to contribute to these two building blocks: Family and dignity. The refugee family tracing platform we operate currently helps more than 135.000 refugees in their quest to find missing loved ones – a number that grows by more than 500 every day. To the digital world this may not seem stunning – but consider that prior to the birth of the Refugees United family tracing service, a refugee agency carrying out family tracing typically had the capacity to open 750 cases – a year!

One of the key reasons Refugees United and partners are able to help so many are the technologies we employ. These technologies are actually fairly low-tech, yet high on the other key building block: dignity. Using SMS and other accessible platforms, we extend our services to even the most remote regions of the world, enabling us to reach, and include, most people.

When we set out to focus on refugee family tracing using mobile platforms available on most low-cost handsets, it was out of a wish for inclusion. Before Refugees United, refugee family tracing was a one-way affair: A refugee in search of missing loved ones would turn up at an office, be interviewed on personal details, and then his or her active participation in the process would come to an end. Notice would then be given to the refugee on whether or not the search had been successful. This process could take months and years.

Refugees United wanted to tap into the knowledge networks of refugees themselves in the quest to reconnect separated families. Through distributed teams created and managed with partners like Kenya Red Cross, hundreds of trained refugees function as touch-points inside refugee camps, assisting their community members in signing up, searching and reconnecting with missing loved ones using $20 mobile phones.

If you melt away the efficiencies and tech-approaches, you’re left with something even more significant: dignity. Refugees United is trying to shift the traditional aid structure between deliverer and recipient, moving from a one-way monologue to a partnership dialogue between the persons in need and us. By bringing the refugees to the center of the conversation, allowing them to decide what information to share, when to share it and with whom to share it, they are in charge of their own situation when it comes to finding missing loved ones. The ability to make the choices that have an impact on your life is building block number one.

One of the most rewarding things Refugees United and partners encounter are the moments when a refugee is brought to understand that our support is not unconditional, that for us to be successful, they must participate, engage and interact. Their input is not only valued, it’s needed. This moment carries immense importance because it becomes a partnership – not a handout. Is it always working? Nope. Is it flawless? Not even close, but it’s a beginning. We teach, we educate, we learn.

This, we believe, is part of the future of aid: A move away from one-way relations to an empowerment and inclusion of our constituents. With the proliferation of technology comes the ability to access information. With access to information comes the ability to make more educated choices. This, in its simplest form, is empowerment.

These opportunities are only made possible via the concerted actions of a number of different agencies and actors. Without partners like the Kenya Red Cross, UNHCR, Refugee Consortium of Kenya, InterSOS and others, we would be nowhere. While technology has made huge inroads in the world of refugee assistance, technology is but an enabler. Technology is what makes collaborating and sharing easier, but it takes people and persistence to bring it to work. On the side of technology, it’s because of the partnerships we enjoy with Ericsson, our main technology partner, Safaricom, Vodafone Egypt, MTN, Delta Partners and others, that we’re together able to provide the platforms and communications to foster these collaborations.

Here’s to the world’s refugees. May you find home, may you find your family!

On behalf of the Refugees United Team,

David and Christopher Mikkelsen

Climate change and displacement

Climate change, global warming and the resulting environmental pressures are among the defining challenges of our times. Climate change interacts with other global mega-trends that are conditioning the future of our planet, including population growth, urbanization, water scarcity, food and energy insecurity, and volatile commodity prices. This is adding to the scale and complexity of human mobility and displacement, and changing their patterns

Owing to this interaction, conflict and competition over scarcer natural resources will push more and more people to flee their homes or relocate to other areas. They will become displaced within their countries or across national borders. Environmentally induced migration and displacement could reach epic dimensions: predictions about the scale of such movements range from 25 million to one billion people by 2050.

Climate change impacts, such as prolonged drought and floods, are already a challenge for UNHCR’s operations. That’s why the UN refugee agency is engaged on the climate change issue and wants to contribute to the debate about how best to address these challenges, within a humanitarian perspective.

UNHCR chief António Guterres will attend the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also called Rio+20, that will take place in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22. In a range of events, Guterres will discuss the changing face of global displacement and its link to sustainable development.

Rio+20 will gather world leaders, government officials, the private sector and non-governmental organizations to discuss how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and preserve the environment.

This sub-site contains reference documents, web stories, photo galleries and videos about the impact of climate change on UNHCR’s mandate and on the humanitarian response given by the UN refugee agency to those in need of international protection and affected by environmental pressures.

Refugees United

The service, developed by Refugees United in partnership with telecommunications company Ericsson, has registered users from all across the globe, but at the moment primarily sees its surge in numbers from African countries like Somalia, Congo, and Sudan.  With the current conflict between Sudan and South Sudan, numbers from this specific refugee group are also expected to increase, as families flee the regions and end up in separate places and refugee camps.

Refugees United focuses on expanding the technology via partner collaboration with e.g. Red Cross and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in refugee camps and urban areas of various African countries, where teams on ground help illiterate refugees benefit from the technology.

Christopher Mikkelsen, co-founder of Refugees United, says: “100,000 people registered on the Refugees United family tracing platform in search of missing family members is a testament to the pressing need for family tracing globally. Of the 43 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, hundreds of thousand refugee families remain scattered across the globe – we hope that it’s a problem we can help eradicate with the use of our technology and growing network of partnerships with entities like Ericsson, MTN Group, Safaricom, and UNHCR”.

Two Congolese brothers reunited after more than 10 years of separation
With 100,000 now registered on the online platform, Refugees United is beginning to see the anticipated snowball effect of family reconnections as numbers in the database grow rapidly.

Recently, two Congolese refugee brothers were reunited via the family tracing platform after more than 10 years of separation. The brothers were separated in 1998 during the Second Congo War, when a community-based militia group attacked their local village. Over the years, the brothers ended up in Kenya and Uganda, respectively. Reconnected today via the mobile platform, they communicate frequently and hope to also meet physically in the near future.

Christopher Mikkelsen comments: “It’s stories like this that demonstrate the impact of the right technologies in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. Right now, millions of refugees live not only in camps and cities across Africa and Asia, but also in the Western world, with 1,6 million refugees in Europe and a quarter million in the US[1]. We’ve already seen family reconnections between e.g. the U.S. and Somalia – something we anticipate to see much more frequently as we aim to double our scale within this year alone”.

BACKGROUND: The growing refugee challenge

According to the United Nations, there are 43 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, the highest number in fifteen years, with numbers expected to increase significantly in the medium-term due to conflicts and climate change effects.

Many refugees end up in countries far from home. According to the UNHCR, the host countries with the largest numbers of refugees as of January 2011 were:

More statistics at: http://www.unhcr.org

About Refugees United
Refugees United is an independent, non-profit organization with the mission of reconnecting thousands of separated refugee families across the globe via an online, mobile-enabled search tool. The free service is available in many different languages and contains searchable information on refugees of more than 82 nationalities.

Refugees United is supported by corporate partners and organizations such as Ericsson, SAP, IKEA Foundation and Omidyar Network and local network providers like Safaricom (Kenya) and MTN Group (globally). Refugees United collaborates with entities such as the Red Cross, Refugee Consortium of Kenya, INTERSOS and the UNHCR in order to reach out to and assist refugees with family tracing in various African countries. Access the Refugees United service on web: www.refunite.org and mobile: m.refunite.org and learn more at http://info.refunite.org.

Sister Angelique in Dungu, where she helps vulnerable women, including those abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. (Photo: M. Hofer/ UNHCR)

Sister Angelique is a familiar sight as she bicycles around the dusty town of Dungu on her way to meet women who really do see her as a blessing.

That’s because she’s been helping them recover from the trauma of being abducted and abused by the feared Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal Ugandan rebel group that has been terrorizing people in this corner of north-east Democratic Republic of the Congo for years.

“Since 2008, I’ve been taking care of young girls when they come out of the bush after being abducted by the LRA,” the 45-year-old Roman Catholic nun told UNHCR while helping three young women bake bread in the centre she runs in Dungu to help victims reintegrate and rebuild their lives. Her UNHCR-supported organization also works to restore their hope in the future.

The association, Dynamic Women for Peace, runs basic literacy classes in lingala as well as a wide range of vocational training programmes and income-generation activities aimed at helping female LRA victims. These include sewing, baking, cooking, soap making and agriculture. UNHCR’s local implementing partner, Centre d’Íntervention Psychologique, has provided equipment and tools.

Not everyone can come to Dungu and that’s where Sister Angelique’s bike comes in useful. She uses it to reach women living in the settlements for internally displaced people that have sprung up near Dungu. Since January, more than 4,000 people have moved to these sites after LRA attacks.

Rose* lives in one such site called Bangapili, where she has been taking the language classes offered by Sister Angelique’s church affiliated Dynamic Women for Peace. Rose, who is in her 40s, was briefly held by the LRA after a deadly attack on the town of Duru five years ago.

“They killed three people in my house – my eldest son who was 21, my younger sister and my uncle,” she revealed. “Then they took me with them in the bush. But as I was pregnant, the commander said that I was not useful and they released me after two days.” She has not seen her husband since.

After being released, Rose found her surviving children hiding in a field and fled with them the 45 kilometres to Dungu.

She said lingala is not her mother tongue so the lessons had been very useful in helping her integrate. “I always had many problems with the women here at the market, because we could not communicate. But now, I am feeling much better. I like to learn to read and to write. I like to learn other things,” added Rose, who farms on the land of locals to make money but plans to take a vocational training course to improve her livelihood prospects.

Sister Angelique said the training offered by her organization benefitted not only LRA victims, but also single women or widows with large families. She said that once skills training was over, the association gives a small credit to the women to buy raw materials and start a small business. They pay back the loan when they start making money.

“We have to help them earn enough every day to feed themselves and their children instead of making money here and there or begging their neighbours for backbreaking work in the fields,” the sister stressed.

Twenty-two-year-old Madeleine* is not an LRA victim, but she struggles alone in Dungu to raise three children, including the child of her sister who died a year ago. She took the bakery course offered by Dynamic Women for Peace and now earns the equivalent of about US$20 a week for her small family.

“I bought these shoes, pagnes [traditional female garment] and clothes for my children,” she said while proudly showing off the colourful pagnes. “I am happy, but if I have enough money, I would like to study medicine and become a nurse,” added the young woman, whose education was cut short when she left school at 16 after becoming pregnant.

Sister Angelique is proud of the women who come through her centre and happy that she has been able to “help them become autonomous.” She is delighted that “the catering service we established with women cooks is very famous in town. We have a high demand to cook for events and seminars.”

The nun said the women change a lot during their time with her organization. “Some were scared to go out, but today, thanks to the activities, they open up,” she said, adding with a smile: “They talk with vivacity and fearlessness.”

But there’s a lot of hard work involved, Sister Angelique admitted. “We lack the means to achieve everything necessary to help these women. Often, it takes a lot of time for women to understand the training,” she explained. “Sometimes, before going to sleep, I ask myself why I continue and then I think that someone has to help these women and I have to make a sacrifice . . . When they tell me their stories, I force myself not to let the tears flow.”

* Names changed for protection reasons.

By Céline Schmitt in Dungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Turkish officials have contingency plans in the event of a larger-scale incursion as Syrian regime forces storm opposition towns near the Turkish border. (Reuters)

More than 1,000 Syrian refugees fled to Turkey in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of people currently staying in Turkey to nearly 21,000, a Turkish official told AFP on Thursday.

“A total of 1,043 Syrians made their way to Turkey in a single day, marking the highest figure in recent times,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

Turkey is home to a growing number of refugees fleeing the unrest in neighboring Syria which has left more than 9,000 people dead since March last year, according to U.N. figures.

Security forces stand in front of relatives and supporters of soldiers fighting Tuareg rebels during a protest (Photo: AFP/File)

Clashes between the army and Tuareg rebels in northern Mali have forced 195,000 people to flee their homes since mid-January, the United Nations humanitarian office OCHA said Thursday.

“The number of people displaced by the conflict continues to increase and is approaching 195,000, including nearly 100,000 who have fled abroad,” read a statement from the agency.

The refugees have headed mostly to Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Algeria.

Tuareg rebels are waging their biggest offensive since a 2009 rebellion as they demand autonomy in Mali’s vast north, and have launched several attacks on towns in the region since mid-January.

There have been reports of scores of executions, and deaths of civilians and soldiers in the fighting.

Many of the refugees are fleeing to areas facing severe food shortages as a result of low rainfalls, meagre harvests and high food prices.

A nomadic community of some 1.5 million people, Tuareg of various tribes are scattered between Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Niger and Mali.

Mali and Niger experienced uprisings as the Tuareg fought for recognition of their identity and an independent state in the 1960s, 1990s and early 2000s, with a resurgence between 2006 and 2009.

Many Tuareg left for Libya where they later fought for Moamer Kadhafi’s regime, but after his death in October they returned home, some heavily armed.

By Chris Doyle

Once a sanctuary for refugees, Lebanon is now divided down sectarian lines in how it reacts to those fleeing Syria

The refugees were all crammed into a school. They were Lebanese. The children slept on threadbare mattresses in classrooms. Generous locals were bringing in supplies. This was Homs in 2006 and the families had been fleeing the Israeli bombing in Lebanon. Homs was once again playing host to Lebanese refugees, as it had done during much of the 15-year Lebanese civil war.

Fast forward to this January. I was surrounded by refugee children in an abandoned school but this time the roles were reversed. Lebanese were hosting people from Homs in the villages of Wadi Khaled, a mountainous region of north-east Lebanon.

Since last April, hundreds have crossed the border, fleeing the Assad regime’s oppression. By this month there were just over 7,000 UN-registered refugees in northern Lebanon, with thousands living unregistered in the hills and in Tripoli.

As the Syrian regime “cleansed” Bab Amr in Homs, another 2,000 to 3,000 fled across the border, joined by others following the Syrian army’s shelling of towns such as Al Qusayr near the border on 4 March.

The refugees had to walk for days in freezing conditions, evading landmines and regime forces who shelled one bridge used to cross into Lebanon at Qusayr.

They arrive traumatised by the horrors of what they left behind. Most families have lost loved ones and are terrified of going back. One refugee I met during my visit had had to be dragged injured by his friends across a minefield. Refugees from Tell Kalakh, close to the border, told me that their houses had either been taken over or destroyed since they left.

The effects on children have, as ever, been the most dramatic. In a run-down apartment in Tripoli, Ahmed, a four-year-old boy from Homs, came up to me and said: “All I can hear is the tanks firing outside my house.”

Historically, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan have all hosted refugee communities including Armenians, Palestinians and Iraqis. Lebanon was traditionally a haven for refugees from the region seeking the protection of its mountains – but no longer. Just ask the Palestinians who languish in appalling refugee camps.

The current Lebanese government is friendly with Damascus and does all it can to discourage Syrian refugees. They are not even recognised as refugees. The Lebanese politically correct phrase is “those fleeing the unrest”. The Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, dismissed the issue last Thursday, saying: “The influx of some Syrian families as a result of the turbulence in Syrian does not constitute a major problem because they can stay with their relatives.”

This echoes Reem Haddad, the Syrian regime’s spokesperson, when she said about Syrians fleeing to Turkey: “It’s a bit like having a problem in your street, and your mum lives in the next street, so you go and visit your mum for a bit.”

The UN high commissioner for refugees has to operate quietly under the eye of Lebanese security. The Syrians cannot get jobs and are not allowed permits to travel around Lebanon. As yet, there is no question of establishing a refugee camp as in Turkey and Jordan. Many Syrians are critical of the UN, believing that they should do more. Many refugees are afraid to register, concerned that their details would be handed over to the Lebanese or Syrian security services.

Many of the latest refugees entered Lebanon through the Beka’a valley where they were stopped and searched by the Lebanese army. Around 30 to 40 have been arrested, according to Syrian activists. All this creates additional tension as the Beka’a is predominantly Shia and under Hezbollah control, while the refugees are nearly all Sunni.

Not all Lebanese are unwelcoming. The refugees in Wadi Khaled and Tripoli are largely housed by local families, even though the villages in this area are among the most deprived in Lebanon with high unemployment. The refugees I met shivered in unheated buildings, some without windows, but many of the latest arrivals are freezing inside tents. It may not get much warmer soon. A local saying warns: “Keep your biggest coals for March.”

Support for the refugees is broadly divided on sectarian political grounds. Lebanese Sunnis have largely rallied round to lend support, including former Lebanese prime minister Sa’ad al-Hariri’s Future Movement. On the other hand, the Maronite Christian patriarch has just declared that “the closest thing to democracy (in the Arab world) is Syria”.

All of this exposes Lebanon to additional tensions as a result of the Syria crisis. Its politics is polarised and inter-community tensions are on the increase. In February, three people were killed in clashes between Lebanese Alawis and Sunnis in Tripoli.

All the major political players, perhaps even Hezbollah, are calculating very carefully how to position themselves if the Assad regime falls. Walid Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist party and powerful Druze community, has jumped the gun with his umpteenth U-turn, by announcing his opposition to the Syrian regime once again, while remaining part of the pro-Assad coalition. His solution, he told me, was for the west to find out how much they had to bribe the Russians.

These refugees need and deserve our support. In Tripoli, doctors tell me that they cannot cope with the injured and require help now. The international community could do little to help the people of Homs throughout the shelling of Bab Amr, but they can at least ensure that survivors of that terrifying ordeal can live in dignity in Lebanon with their rights respected. So far, international governments have done precious little.