On the roof of a building in Bourj el-Barajneh, the Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut where she was born and raised, Doumoua al-Baitan watched the sun go down. Like many Palestinians in Lebanon, she has depended for decades on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which is now struggling to deliver even basic services after severe funding cuts.
The agency's difficulties intensified after the Trump administration decided in February 2025 to keep in place a US funding freeze imposed the previous year. Between outright cuts and wider shortfalls, UNRWA has been forced to shut or reduce hours at schools, healthcare centres and clinics across Lebanon's 12 Palestinian refugee camps, home to a large share of the country's roughly 230,000 Palestinians.
UNRWA spokesperson Fadi al-Tayyar said in October that the agency needed an additional $70m to $80m for 2026, and that service working hours have been cut by 20 percent since February. Many schools will move from a five-day to a four-day week for the 2026-27 academic year, affecting more than 35,000 pupils in 58 schools, along with 15 extra classrooms in the northern Beddawi camp near Tripoli. In Bourj el-Barajneh, residents said most camp schools have closed and children are now packed into classrooms of 40 or more.
"My kids cannot retain what they are taught in class," al-Baitan said of the overcrowding. The divorced mother of four now pays $200 a month, the same as her rent, so two of her children can attend after-school lessons.
UNRWA has supported Palestinian refugees across the Middle East since 1950, two years after the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist forces established the state of Israel after turning 750,000 Palestinians into refugees. Most Palestinians in Lebanon remain de facto stateless without Lebanese citizenship, effectively barring them from professions such as medicine, law, engineering and pharmacy and making the community one of the country's most vulnerable. A monthly report by the Jafra Foundation warned the shortfall "threatens the education, healthcare, water, and sanitation services provided by UNRWA" across its five areas of operation: Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
The strain on healthcare is already visible. UNRWA's June 2026 emergency report found only 15 of 26 primary healthcare centres and clinics were still operating, with 11 shut down. Some refugees face compounding hardship, including between 3,000 and 5,000 who are undocumented and an estimated 19,000 Palestinians from Syria. A policy change in May 2024 halted residency renewals for many Palestinians from Syria, increasing their exposure to detention and making legal work, education registration and civil matters harder.
Locals and experts said the funding gaps have also fuelled drugs and violence in the camps. "There is a very tired economic situation and there is no work," said Fadi Abu Halawa, security officer at the Jafra Foundation in Beirut, adding that Jafra's monthly report showed rising crime and drug use and distribution. "Of course, all of this is 100 percent due to the economy," he said.
Camp residents have responded with sit-ins, including one planned for Friday in Shatila, one of Beirut's largest camps. Jafra's October report said UNRWA's recent distribution of bread and flour "sparked widespread dissatisfaction," with refugees arguing that a five-kilogram bag of flour per family falls short, especially for large households, and does not make up for reduced services.
Israel's war on Lebanon has added to the pressure. Five camps sit in the south and have faced displacement and attacks. Israel killed 12 people in strikes across Lebanon in February, including two in Ein el-Hilweh, the country's biggest Palestinian camp, in Sidon. Three months earlier, an attack there killed at least 13 people, including 11 children playing football. Jafra's October report said the camps "have been witnessing a state of security instability" amid fears that Israeli operations in southern Lebanon could approach the camps and trigger a new wave of displacement.
