Tag: Beirut

‘Next time we will not survive’ – Middle East Christian refugee

November 12, 2018 Aleppo, Batnaya, Beirut, Hasakah, Iraq, Islamic State, Kirkuk, Lebanon, Middle East, Mosul, Qaraqosh, Raqqa, Refugees, Syria, UN

Boy outside a tent in a refugee camp in Lebanon. (Photo: World Vision)

As many as 80% of Syria’s Christians have left their country since the start of the civil war in 2011, while 50% of Iraq’s Christians have been uprooted since 2006, according to a report produced by Christian charities Open Doors International, Served and Middle East Concern last year, which said the . . . Read More

Christmas for refugees in Lebanon: far from home and reduced to handouts

December 30, 2017 Lebanon Beirut, Iraq, Islamic State, Lebanon, Refugees, Syria

How do Christians under pressure for their faith celebrate Christmas? In the seventh in our series we hear from a Lebanese Catholic who helps look after Iraqi and Syrian refugees in Beirut. Lebanon has absorbed more than a million refugees from conflicts in nearby Syria and Iraq, where Christians either . . . Read More

‘My daughters have no future in the Middle East’

November 10, 2017 Lebanon Beirut, Divorce, Iraq, Islamic State, Lebanon, Refugees, Syria, UN

Suha, an Iraqi Christian living in Beirut with her four daughters and her mother

“I lived with my in-laws for 35 years. At the beginning it was like going to the gallows!” recalls Lydia Babayan, 57, an Iraqi-born Armenian Catholic. “My mother-in-law was very aggressive and my father-in-law was very strict. But my husband’s sister was good to me, she never said a bad . . . Read More

Lives in limbo – Iraqi Christians’ long wait for asylum in Lebanon

November 8, 2017 Lebanon Armenians, Assyrians, Asylum seekers, Beirut, IDPs, Iraq, Islamic State, Lebanon, Middle East, Refugees, Syria, Trauma, UN

Petros Babayan strains to sit up as if each bone of his paper-thin frame were heavy as iron. His wife Lydia and adult daughter Rita rush to help him. In their tiny rented apartment in Beirut, his single bed takes up a quarter of the room in which they live . . . Read More

‘You come here and take our jobs,’ Lebanese tell refugees

November 19, 2015 Lebanon Beirut, Lebanon, Refugees, Syria, Turkey, UN

World Watch Monitor has an occasional diary from a church leader still in Aleppo, the Syrian city that is now a key battleground between rebels and President Assad’s forces. Recently, however, pastor Samuel* visited Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon to meet some of that country’s one million Syrian refugees. This is his edited . . . Read More

Catching Our Eye