Interview with Rola El Mourad

Could you summarize Afaq’s activities related to the COVID-19 pandemic?

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged on the local scene and became a source of fear and terror, and claimed a lot of deaths, Afaq set up a disaster management team on WhatsApp which consisted of activists and doctors from all over Lebanon, and we developed a quick rescue plan. We created a team of volunteers on the ground under our supervision and provided them with all the protective supplies of clothing, masks, and sanitary products, and created a delivery team to provide everything necessary for the sick in their homes. We also distributed masks and sanitary products to students in several public schools as well as preventive and medical supplies to youth initiatives, NGOs and centres that were working on the ground. Finally, we provided people with a list of centres and NGOs that provided breathing machines free of charge.

What was Afaq’s role following the two blasts that devastated the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020?

Afaq established a team of university students, most of whom are specialised in the social, psychological, or engineering fields. At first, we rented a bus to transport us from the north to Beirut to help clean the streets. We also set up a tent in downtown Beirut to provide meals for the affected people and volunteers and provided the necessary clothes and supplies for some of the families who lost their homes. For a period of 1 week, a team of 30 volunteers from Afaq were going from the north to the Karantina area in Beirut (next to the port), and we examined the damages, filled out questionnaires and identified their needs. After that, we moved on to the aid phase which included the distribution of electrical appliances, furniture, kitchen supplies, medicines, diapers, milk, and food items. Moreover, Afaq formed a team of carpenters and blacksmiths to repair the doors, windows, and broken furniture so that the houses are suitable for habitation. During these interventions, we discovered several cases in need of psychological intervention and referred them to specialists or NGOs that focus on this topic. Afaq also joined several WhatsApp groups that were working on managing this disaster and we all exchanged the needs and names of those affected to facilitate our work in the intervention area. At the end of our work, we prepared a detailed report and submitted it to the Disaster Management Authority in the Municipality of Beirut, for which the Lebanese Army was responsible.

And what about the Akkar fires in Akroum Al-Qobayat (North Lebanon)?

The fires hit large green areas, one of the most beautiful touristic areas in Akkar, and spread for several days to several villages and turned them into disasters. After the fires were extinguished, Afaq completed an assessment of the land and reached out to the owners and prepared a full file on the needs of the people for land reclamation. However, the required amounts were very high and beyond our capacity, so we couldn’t secure it, although we have reached out to several people who are interested in agriculture.

The Akkar region also suffered a fuel tanker explosion in Al-Tleil village. What was the response implemented by Afaq in this context?

Due to the fuel crisis in Lebanon, specifically in Akkar, and the closure of petrol stations, the citizens resorted to hiding fuel in storage areas. When one of the warehouses hiding the fuel was discovered, the landowner sent one of his workers to light a tank and therefore the disaster occurred where many young people got burned, and many others died. Two days after the explosion, we developed a campaign to secure medical supplies for burns and to secure a specialist doctor. Then we started looking for the injured people to treat them in their homes because we know that the situation of hospitals in Akkar is very bad, especially when it comes to burns. The number of injured people was very high, and they were treated randomly at hospitals on the day of the accident. It is remarkable that no one has been contacted, not by the State, or NGOs or local clinics, and their health condition was very bad. For a period of 25 days, we treated the injured even though we had a fuel supply problem and had to pay extra money to buy fuel on the black market. After we finished treating the injured, we prepared a detailed file on each patient that includes the stages and cost of treatment.

As a conclusion, according to your extensive experience, could you please share your observations and lessons learned on aid localisation?         

There is no doubt that local NGOs wouldn’t have been able to do their job without the financial support they have received internally or externally, whether from Lebanese or non-Lebanese or from international organisations. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have several observations about this cooperation, especially about its mechanisms.

Many organisations focused on the administrative aspect rather than on the humanitarian aspect, so we used up a lot of energy in preparing hundreds of files and papers to the extent that 70% of our work was administrative and 30% was humanitarian. Very often, we referred to administrative experts who were very expensive, sometimes we could secure them and sometimes we couldn’t, so we lost grants even though we had the required experience to implement on the ground. Here I wonder about the relationship between international organisations and local policies and how relevant and effective it is to spend such a large proportion of funding on collecting information for situation analyses, needs assessments, etc.

The parties in power in Lebanon have always used certain NGOs, municipalities, and cooperatives to benefit from donors and other international organisations to fund their activities and buy votes. A review of the projects carried out by municipalities funded by foreign countries shows that the objectives for which they received funding have not been achieved. The simplest examples are the money spent on waste, sorting, and recycling projects, which were not implemented in more than one area. The same goes for the most corrupt agricultural cooperatives that were supposed to create jobs and sustainable development, especially for the rural regions. Unfortunately, the political parties have taken control of them and have benefited from the funds allocated to them. Political family NGOs, most of which are supervised by the wives and families of senior leaders, also received international funding officially to care for refugees or people with disabilities, or even to hold festivals in the regions.

All the above raises the issue of the transparency that is demanded by the donors, which in my opinion opens the door to many questions about transparency among the donors who indirectly support political parties.

The third point is about the needs of communities. Who says that international organisations are more aware of the needs on the ground than local civil society organisations in the regions? Unfortunately, it is the donors who determine intervention policies and how their funds are to be distributed, without considering the different needs from one region to another. Why was so much money spent on workshops instead of spending it to counter the effects of economic collapse and the unemployment crisis? Especially since most NGOs do not need these workshops, and only attend them so that they can submit projects. Finally, from 2004 to the present, international organisations have developed a disaster management plan, but the results have not changed. Wouldn’t it be worth reconsidering the strategies, action plans and alliances that are needed to achieve better results?