World Humanitarian Day 2020: Real Life Heroes

Beirut – You never imagine a crisis will happen in the place you grew up.  

The explosions two weeks ago in the Port of Beirut have shaken me to my core. 

However, I have also watched people making huge sacrifices to ensure people they do not know will survive. This sprit has eased my pain and uneasiness. 

On that day, Beirut felt like a war zone. I was coming out of work when it happened; a couple windows blew out on either side of the street and the sky filled with a bright pink cloud. Everyone was rushing about and there was a lot of confusion.  

Getting to the affected area was something neither I, nor anyone else in the city, will ever forget. There was smoke…many injured people. These were simply not the same streets they were a couple of minutes before the explosion. 

There was chaos but amid the chaos, people were rushing to that area with first aid kits to lend a helping hand. That night we were just focused on calling everyone to make sure they were getting through the shock and had a place to sleep for the night.  

The next day, there were so many people – young and old – out on the streets with a broom, a dustpan and a pair of gloves. You have no idea what to do or where to start when the streets are full of rubble. Other colleagues and I brought brooms, bottles of water, food, and helped each other out.  

And it wasn’t just the Lebanese community. Beirut is home to tens of thousands of migrants and refugees; they too were pitching in, clearing rubble and cleaning the streets. 

On the ground, there have been so many community initiatives to help people find shelters, rehabilitate their homes, find food and even to unite with their pets.  

This response to this crisis stood out more than others I’ve been involved in because of the love, the care and the determination shown by civil society to care for one another. 

In reality, the crisis began before the blast. Since October of last year, an economic crisis has really hurt everyone in this country. Lebanese people have not been able to access their assets. Refugees who already had a very small safety net and were living under the poverty line were badly  impacted. Migrant workers were making much less than before, if they even have jobs. 

This was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak. Due to the national lockdown, businesses could not operate as efficiently as before, and things got even worse for migrants. The number of suicides started to go up, migrants were reporting a lot more abuse and exploitation and many were let go by employers who could not afford to pay them. 

At IOM we began to ramp up our efforts to meet some pressing needs and to collect the evidence and data we need so that we could start to build a sufficient response.  

The 4 August explosions have, I fear, pushed more of these people into poverty and left many displaced, especially those living in impoverished areas in the blast radius. Many had no assets or safety nets to begin with. 

It’s important we don’t overlook this population that has otherwise been largely invisible. Migrants have contributed to this country for a long time. It will take everyone to build this country back better.  

This disaster happened, we can’t go back in time and change that, but we can change the new future we create.  

We need to be patient and have the tolerance to push through. What motivates me is knowing that the harder we work, and the faster we get assistance on the ground, the sooner we’ll see smiles on people’s faces.  

This is being a humanitarian.  

Alisar Bey is a Migrant Assistance Officer with IOM Lebanon.  

She delivered this testimony two weeks after the explosions in the Port of Beirut which left hundreds of thousands of people displaced across Lebanon’s capital.  Among those affected are migrant workers and refugees. IOM is committed to responding to the needs of these populations in the months to come.  

Alisar is one of thousands of IOM staff working on the frontlines of the world’s crises.   

On World Humanitarian Day, we pay tribute to the courage, dedication and determination of the real-life heroes who provide relief to millions of people globally.