Doumoua al-Baitan sat on the roof of a building in Beirut’s Bourj el-Barajneh camp as the sun set. Like many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, al-Baitan was born and raised in the camp. UNRWA provides education, healthcare and social services. But funding cuts, particularly since the Trump administration in February 2025 maintained a US funding freeze imposed the previous year, have forced the agency to reduce services. UNRWA spokesperson Fadi al-Tayyar said it had reduced service working hours by 20 percent since February, and many schools have reduced the school week from five to four days for the 2026-27 academic year.
UNRWA has supported Palestinian refugees across the Middle East since 1950. Palestinians first became refugees in Lebanon during the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist forces established the state of Israel. Today, most are de facto stateless, barred from professions such as medicine, law, engineering and pharmacy, making the community one of the most vulnerable in Lebanon.
UNRWA spokesperson Fadi al-Tayyar told Al Jazeera in October that the agency needed around $70m to $80m more for 2026. More than 35,000 pupils attend 58 schools, with 15 additional classrooms in the northern Beddawi camp, in Tripoli. Residents in Bourj el-Barajneh said most schools in the camp had been shut down and that students were being crammed into classrooms of 40 or more at a time. Al-Baitan, a divorced mother of four, said her children cannot retain what they are taught because of overcrowding. She now pays $200 per month, the same as her rent, for two of her children to attend after-school lessons.
According to a monthly report by the Jafra Foundation, a nonprofit supporting vulnerable communities in Lebanon, the shortfall “threatens the education, healthcare, water, and sanitation services provided by UNRWA and exacerbates the pressures on millions of Palestinian refugees in its five areas of operation: the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria”.
UNRWA’s June 2026 emergency report found that of 26 primary healthcare centres and clinics, only 15 were operational; 11 had shut down. Between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are undocumented, and an estimated 19,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria live in Lebanon, many having fled Syria’s 13-year war. A policy change in Lebanon in May 2024 halted residency renewals for many Palestinians from Syria, increasing exposure to detention and making it more difficult to find legal employment and register for education or civil issues.
Locals and experts said the funding shortfalls have led to a proliferation of issues related to drugs and violence in the camps. “There is a very tired economic situation and there is no work,” Fadi Abu Halawa, security officer at the Jafra Foundation in Beirut, told Al Jazeera, adding that the monthly report showed an increase in crime, drug use and distribution in the camps. “Of course, all of this is 100 percent due to the economy,” he said.
People in the camps have responded with sit-ins. Shatila camp, one of the largest in Beirut, has organised one for Friday. Jafra’s October report noted “widespread dissatisfaction” over UNRWA’s distribution of a 5-kilogram bag of flour per family, which residents said does not meet households’ needs. Israel’s war on Lebanon has also hit the camps: five lie in southern Lebanon and have faced displacement and attacks. Israel killed 12 people in attacks across Lebanon in February, including two in Ein el-Hilweh, Lebanon’s biggest Palestinian camp in Sidon. Three months earlier, it killed at least 13 people, including 11 children, playing football in the dense camp. Jafra’s October report said the camps have been witnessing “a state of security instability with the recent Israeli escalation in military operations in southern Lebanon, amid fears that these operations are approaching the camps, which may lead to a new wave of displacement of refugee families”.