Reconstructing Beirut after deadly 2020 port blasts remains bumpy: NGOs, officials

Beirut, Aug 2 (IANS) Although progress has been made in reconstructing Beirut after the deadly 2020 port blasts, the road ahead remains bumpy amid declining funding, lack of cooperation, and the overall unstable situation in Lebanon, local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and government officials said recently.

The Beirut port was rocked by two massive explosions on August 4, 2020, killing over 200 people, injuring thousands, and destroying around 50,000 housing units, with material losses estimated at 15 billion US dollars.

According to Sarkis Khoury, Director-General of antiquities at the Ministry of Culture in Lebanon, at least 8,000 buildings, many concentrated in the residential neighborhoods of Gemayzeh and Mar Mikhael, were affected by the deadly blasts. Among them were some 640 historic buildings, about 60 of which were at risk of collapse.

In the fourth year of reconstruction, many local NGOs found themselves dealing with financial challenges due to a lack of trust in these organisations, Xinhua news agency reported.

Maya Ibrahimchah, founder of Beit el Baraka, a multi-tasking NGO providing food, housing, medical, and education services to vulnerable families, told Xinhua that within 18 months of the explosion, her organization was able to repair 3,011 houses, 668 small businesses, seven schools, part of the emergency section of Geitawi hospital, 12 building facades, and 21 heritage buildings.

"Following the explosion, we were able to raise around 3.8 million US dollars and in-kind donations ... but today, we face financial issues that prevent us from continuing our reconstruction work," Ibrahimchah said, adding that there was an almost 80-percent drop in funding following accusations against NGOs of squandering aid money.

"The halt in donations came at a very bad time when we already had lots of families to help," she said.

Echoing Ibrahimchah, Project Development Manager of Rebirth Beirut, Samar Hawa, noted that funding is a challenge nowadays.

Sustainable urban planning should be implemented in Beirut, which would help preserve cultural heritage properly, Hawa told Xinhua.

Sandra Klat, president and founder of Bassma, an NGO that supports the elderly and vulnerable groups, also told Xinhua that her organisation's budget is depleted.

"We need money to continue our work," she said, expressing pessimism about receiving new reconstruction funds amid the Gaza war and the unstable situation in Lebanon.

Additionally, there has been a lack of cooperation between NGOs following the port blasts, Klat said.

"We wanted to fix some houses but found other NGOs visiting for the same purpose," she said, adding that "many people did not trust NGOs, thinking we would visit once and then disappear."

The Beirut Urban Lab, a collaborative and interdisciplinary research space, identified about 120 actors participating in home repairs in the neighborhoods severely affected by the port blasts.

The scale of repair operations varied widely across neighborhoods and within the same neighborhood blocks, and NGOs intervened without a coordinated, integrated approach, according to the lab.

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