WASHINGTON — The American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) is pleased to announce a $250,000 grant from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to provide critical humanitarian assistance for Palestinian refugees fleeing the violence and destruction of their homes in Syria. 

ANERA and its Lebanese partner, Beit Atfal Assummoud will work together to deliver critical humanitarian assistance to these refugees who have sought shelter in Palestinian refugee camps in and around the Lebanese city of Tyre.   

The three-month-long program, funded through OCHA’s Syria – Emergency Response Fund, aims at providing support to meet some of the refugees’ basic needs, such as bedding and clothing, as well as food and personal hygiene and baby kits.  Most refugees have arrived in Lebanon with only the clothes they were wearing when they fled the fighting at home. 

The number of Palestinian refugees from Syria surpasses 30,000. As the fighting in Syria continues, more refugees are expected to pour into Lebanon, creating further pressures on UNRWA and other organizations in Lebanon responding to the Syrian crisis. 

“This project fills an important gap in the overall emergency response to the Syrian refugee crisis,” says ANERA President Bill Corcoran. “Palestinians do not fall under the UNHCR mandate and UNRWA in Lebanon alone cannot manage the increasing number of Palestinian refugees from Syria.” 

In addition to the OCHA grant, ANERA has mobilized support through its In-Kind program, delivering vital medicines to camp clinics that Syrian refugees can also access.  Approximately 1,000 Palestinian refugee families from Syria will benefit from the OCHA-funded program as well as host families in the refugee camps who have shown great generosity despite their own economic hardships. More than half the Palestinian refugees from Syria have sought shelter in the refugee camps in southern Lebanon, one of the poorest areas of the country. 

For more than 45 years, ANERA has been a leading provider of development, health, education and employment programs to Palestinian communities and impoverished families throughout the Middle East.  In FY 2012, the relief and development agency delivered more than $40 million of programs to the people of the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan.