Design Fictions and Refugee Problems in Beqaa Valley, Lebanon

This report examines the refugee crisis in the Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, focusing on the challenges faced by refugees and potential design-led solutions. The introduction highlights the socio-political complexities of the refugee situation, driven by violence, war, and persecution, with a particular emphasis on the Syrian refugee crisis and the harsh conditions in the Beqaa Valley camps. The report delves into the historical background, cultural impacts, and communication challenges faced by refugees, as well as environmental issues within the camps. It further explores the functions and issues associated with the crisis, including movement, persecution, and integration. The report includes design fictions (utopian, practical, impractical, and typical) to propose a holistic range of possible design solutions. The conclusion emphasizes the need for innovative solutions and the impact on refugees. References to relevant literature and sources are also provided.

Refugee Problems in
Beqaa Valley

Introduction
 Refugee problem is a great socio-political problem faced by many people in
Beqaa Valley and many other countries.
 A refugee is a person who is forced to move from his country of birth or flee
due to violence, war and persecution.
 The well-founded fear for a refugee comes from persecutions of race,
political opinion, and religion, membership of a particular group or nationality
(Ammar, et al,2016)..
 Refugees cannot turn to their homes or go back to their fear of persecutions.
 Ethnic wars, religious and tribal violence are the leading refugee’s causes in
most countries.
 Two-thirds of worldwide refugees comes from Lebanon Somalia, South
Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and Myanmar.

Beqqa Valley

Short History and Background
 As earlier stated, the main cause of refugee problems is due to civil wars, economic
hardships, human rights violations, and environmental and climate hardships in Beqaa
Valley.
 Over the last seven years, the war in Syria has ravaged most of the country and torn it into
a war zone.
 More than 350,000 people are living in makeshift camps in Northern Bekaa a very harsh but
fertile valley at the border of Syria.
 Most of the places are privately owned and the people provide cheap labor in olive farms of
private individual to support their families (Holmes, & Castañeda, 2016)..
 Young children as little as 10 years work in this farms to support their families.
 Charity organizations such as GVC with the help of EU government help to support these
people with shelter, sanitations and drinking water.
 The history has continued for years to but the proliferation of political and religious unrest
around the world has led to increase in the number of refugees especially in Africa, Asia and
the Middle East.

Culture
 The inclusion of immigrants and refugees in other parts of the world has led to cultural
diversification and mixing of refugee’s cultures and the rest of the world.
 The current crisis in refugees and immigrant movement is the biggest since the world war
two.
 In the Mediterranean alone, more than 3000 people have drowned last year trying to cross
to Italy and Spain.
 Due to the large scale nature of the crisis, refugee problem has been associated with
destitute immigrants by people in unaffected regions due to taking very high risks trying to
cross into Europe (İçduygu, 2015)..
 Refugee have brought a change in cultures in different parts of the world.
 In Australia, for example, immigrants settled in a town and changed the cultures of the
indigenous people, changing the eating and dressing cultures.
 Most of the refugees in developed countries survive on small scale businesses since its
hard for them to get any employment that is sustainable. The cultural changes sometimes
is welcomed by the locals and at times they find it a little bit over the edge.

Communication
 The media often represents refugees as poor, vulnerable, dependent and
sometimes a potential threat to the social economic setup of the receiving
society.
 Politician and political parties also present immigrants as illegal people or
words such as illegal immigrants and a surging refugee crisis is used.
 This negatively affects how the local communities view and receive the
immigrants and may lead to impeding their inclusion socially into the receiving
country.
 With time, their communication may change to the language of the locals or
receiving people.
 Most of the refugees still maintain their languages of communications but may
learn local languages to communicate with locals after social integration.


Cont….

Environment
 The environment in which refugees thrive in is sometimes inhuman.
 For example, while crossing the Mediterranean, a boat that is required
to carry only 500 people will end up carrying more than 2000 people,
causing overcrowding which causes risks of drowning.
 Movements of refugee’s especially mass movement lead to creation
of camps where the different refugee bodies help them in makeshift
facilities such as tents.
 The sanitation is not the best and the environment for refugees are
one of the worst.

Cont…

Functions
 The research shows how the refugee crisis affect the locals and the
refugees themselves.
 Due to the large scale nature of the crisis, refugee problem has been
associated with destitute immigrants by people in unaffected regions
due to taking very high risks trying to cross into Europe.
 The refugee function varies within different regions (Ostrand, 2015)..

Empathy and Issues
 The issues affecting refugees crisis are the following; movement from
one region to another, political or religious persecutions, return to
their countries of origin, and integration with the locals.
 Empathetically, the issues include hygiene, and sanitation in refugee
camps. It is also to do with how they will be integrate in the society.

4 design Fictions (Utopian, practical, impractical
and typical)
 The design fictions are based on how refugee crisis is seen by many.
 The utopian fiction is something that is unimaginably good for
refuges while the practical and impractical fictions shows how
realistically refugee’s problems is.

Conclusion
 Refugee’s crisis is a major concern worldwide especially at this time
where there are political and religious unrests in most parts of the
world(Yazgan, Utku, & Sirkeci, 2015).
 Most of the refugees in Bekka survive on small scale businesses
since it is hard for them to get any employment that is sustainable.

References
 Ammar, W., Kdouh, O., Hammoud, R., Hamadeh, R., Harb, H., Ammar, Z., ...
& Zalloua, P. A. (2016). Health system resilience: Lebanon and the Syrian
refugee crisis. Journal of global health, 6(2).
 Holmes, S. M., & Castañeda, H. (2016). Representing the “European refugee
crisis” in Germany and beyond: Deservingness and difference, life and
death. American Ethnologist, 43(1), 12-24.
 İçduygu, A. (2015). Syrian refugees in Turkey: The long road
ahead. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.
 Ostrand, N. (2015). The Syrian refugee crisis: A comparison of responses by
Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Journal on
Migration and Human Security, 3(3), 255-279.
 Yazgan, P., Utku, D. E., & Sirkeci, I. (2015). Syrian crisis and
migration. Migration Letters, 12(3), 181-192.