Portrait of Poverty as UN Visits Lebanon's Tripoli, Mediterranean's Poorest City

A home in the Hay al-Tanak shanty town on the outskirts of Lebanon’s Tripoli, where families can barely get enough electricity to keep their refrigerator and one lightbulb on. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)
A home in the Hay al-Tanak shanty town on the outskirts of Lebanon’s Tripoli, where families can barely get enough electricity to keep their refrigerator and one lightbulb on. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)
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Portrait of Poverty as UN Visits Lebanon's Tripoli, Mediterranean's Poorest City

A home in the Hay al-Tanak shanty town on the outskirts of Lebanon’s Tripoli, where families can barely get enough electricity to keep their refrigerator and one lightbulb on. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)
A home in the Hay al-Tanak shanty town on the outskirts of Lebanon’s Tripoli, where families can barely get enough electricity to keep their refrigerator and one lightbulb on. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

After patiently waiting in line, Umm Mustafa extended two grubby plastic containers to a soup kitchen volunteer, who ladled in rice and stewed greens. It would be the only meal the unemployed single mother and her three sons would eat that day.

"I'm already broke and in debt. So for the last year, I've come here every day just to get enough to eat," said the 40-year-old, gesturing to the outdoor soup kitchen in Mina, a coastal strip along the northwestern edges of Lebanon's poorest city, Tripoli.

Wearing a second-hand medical mask secured with one handle - torn - she asked that her nickname, "Mustafa's mother", be used instead of her full name.

"Mina used to be so beautiful. Now this poverty and unemployment has ripped it apart," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Last week, the United Nations' special rapporteur on poverty Olivier de Schutter visited Tripoli as part of a fact-finding mission to Lebanon, whose economic meltdown was ranked by the World Bank has one of the worst since the industrial revolution.

De Schutter had previously served as special rapporteur on the right to food, and the Lebanon trip was only his second on the job after he investigated poverty in Europe.

Once hailed as the country's industrial powerhouse, Tripoli has been reduced to the most impoverished city along the entire Mediterranean coast - even before the current crisis set in, according to UN Habitat.

De Schutter told the Thomson Reuters Foundation he heard "moving" testimony during his day-trip - and feared the city's decline could be the canary in Lebanon's coalmine.

"This city is a concise statement of Lebanon as a whole - an attempt to stitch the scars of the civil war and to live in harmonious relationships across communities despite the economic crisis," de Schutter said.

"I'm watching the impacts the crisis is having on these inter-communal relationships - and Tripoli is a place that should be watched very carefully."

'How many more?'

Few can trace Tripoli's decline as closely as Robert Ayoub, who founded the Maeddat al-Mahhabe soup kitchen that served as de Schutter's first stop in the northern city.

In 2018, Ayoub ran into a former work mate from Tripoli's Port Authority, overshadowed by a fast-expanding port in Beirut.

The city's oil refinery had also stopped functioning, as had the rail line linking it north to Syria and south to the rest of Lebanon. An influx of Syrian refugees fleeing conflict next door meant competition for low-skilled jobs.

By the time Ayoub ran into his old colleague, Tripoli's urban poverty rate sat at 58%, according to UN Habitat, meaning every other resident lived below the poverty line.

"His life had been turned upside down, and he was picking through trash to find recyclable scraps to sell," said Ayoub, who immediately opened Maedat al-Mahhabe to serve about 45 free meals a day, mostly to ex-colleagues turned scrap collectors.

Even before the crisis, less than three-quarters of Tripoli households ate three meals a day, according to the Food & Agricultural Organization - the lowest rate across Lebanon.

Food insecurity has only been aggravated by Lebanon's economic crisis, which has seen the lira lose more than 90% of its value and food prices skyrocket by more than 600%, according to the World Food Program.

Maedat al-Mahhabe now distributes 700 meals, a service the UN called "the ultimate safety net against food poverty."

Yet Ayoub isn't sure how much longer he can hold out and fears the queue for free food will only lengthen.

The kitchen relies on donations, and Ayoub says his diners are selling off their last goods - from empty gas cylinders to washing machines to carpets - to afford electricity or water.

"What do these people do four or five months down the line? Their wedding rings and two pieces of gold jewelry were already sold a long time ago. How many more numbers will we be able to host in these coming months?" he said.

Scraps

Just a few hundred meters away lies Hay al-Tanak, a shanty town where many residents compete for scraps to earn a living.

The state grid provides just two hours power a day, so "privileged" residents paid for a private generator to get enough power to also fire up a television or a few lamps.

"I can't afford a generator to make up the difference," said Ahmed Ayyash, a 30-year-old resident who lives in a one-room shack with his wife and toddler.

Ayyash searches for scraps along the coast from 4am until 1pm, then again from 9pm until 2am, earning about 50,000 Lebanese pounds a day - the equivalent of $2.40. The tide brings in anything from plastic bottles to sheets of wood.

Slums are scattered across Tripoli, offering sub-par housing to the most vulnerable in Hay al-Tanak, Mankoubin and Wadi al-Nahle - all visited by de Schutter.

He passed residents sitting in the dark in one-room shacks.

Stained mattresses were propped upright to dry after a rainy weekend - and this was before Lebanon's wet winter descends.

In its 2017 report, UN Habitat said the need for social housing was "nowhere greater nationally than in Tripoli's urban area" - but the neighborhoods have seen little to no investment.

Magnified Misery

Yet some of Lebanon's ultra-rich also come from Tripoli.

Forbes' 2021 rich list includes six billionaires from Lebanon. The top two - Prime Minister Najib Mikati and his brother, Taha Mikati - hail from Tripoli and own properties in Mina, near the soup kitchen and Hay al-Tanak.

After Lebanon's civil war, investments poured into Beirut and its suburbs - but the "peripheral" northern regions were left out, explained Adib Nehme, a local expert on poverty and development who spent more than a decade at the UN.

"This is not a city with poor pockets like Beirut - this is a poor city with wealth pockets," said Nehme.

Tripoli was particularly vulnerable to the devastation wrought by Lebanon's financial crisis, said Khalid Abu Ismail, who heads the economic development and poverty department at the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

"The story that you see across the rest of the country has been magnified in Tripoli," he said.

Few Tripolitans have faith in the future.

When de Schutter told a group of men and women he would carry their concerns to the government, many visibly scoffed.

"How about you just take us with you when you leave?" one called out.



War-weary Syrians and Lebanese Watch from the Sidelines as Missiles Fly in Israel-Iran Conflict 

A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
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War-weary Syrians and Lebanese Watch from the Sidelines as Missiles Fly in Israel-Iran Conflict 

A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)

In a park overlooking Damascus, 25-year-old Khaldoun Hallak has spent the past few evenings with his friends, drinking yerba mate, snacking on nuts, smoking hookah pipes and watching the sky for missiles streaking overhead.

“We’ve been through 14 years of war, and this is the first time Syria has nothing to do with it and we’re just spectators,” Hallak said.

Since Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Iran last week and Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks against Israel, neighboring countries have been in the flight path.

Outside the scope

Downed missiles and drones have fallen in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, damaging houses, causing fires and reportedly killing one woman in Syria. But those countries have so far not been dragged directly into the conflict, which had killed at least 224 people in Iran and 24 in Israel as of Tuesday, and many in their war-weary populations are hoping it stays that way.

In Lebanon, which is still reeling from last year’s war between Israel and the Hezbollah party, videos making the rounds on social media have shown revelers dancing on rooftops while projectiles flash across the sky in the background.

Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consultancy organization, happened to be visiting Lebanon when the conflict broke out and was attending a wedding when a parade of missiles began lighting up the sky as the DJ played ABBA’s disco hit “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”. He posted a video of the scene that went viral.

“Certainly most in Lebanon and also Syria are very satisfied to be outside the scope of this,” Maksad said.

No longer in the spotlight, a sense of relief

For some in the region, there is also measure of schadenfreude in watching the two sides exchange blows.

There’s a Syrian expression that literally translates as, “The fang of a dog in the hide of a pig.” It means that two people perceived as despicable are fighting with each other. The phrase has surfaced frequently on social media as Syrians express their feelings about the Israel-Iran conflict.

Watching from a park

Many Syrians resented Iran’s heavy-handed intervention in support of former President Bashar al-Assad during the country’s civil war, but are also angered by Israel’s incursions and airstrikes in Syria since Assad’s fall. The Syrian population also widely sympathizes with the Palestinians, particularly with civilians killed and displaced by the ongoing war in Gaza.

“May God set the oppressors against each other,” said Ahmad al-Hussein, 18, in Damascus, who was sitting in a park with friends waiting to see missiles pass overhead Monday night. “I hope it continues. We’ve been harmed by both of them.”

Hallak echoed the sentiment.

“Every time we see a missile going up, we say, may God pour gasoline on this conflict,” he said. “If one side is hit, we will be happy, and if the other side is hit, we will also be happy. We will only be upset if there is a reconciliation between them.”

In Lebanon, where last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, and left destruction in wide swathes of the country’s south and east and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, some see retribution in the footage of destroyed buildings in Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah remains largely quiet

A US-brokered ceasefire deal brought an end to the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November. The group, which lost much of its senior leadership and arsenal in the conflict, has remained largely quiet since then and has given no indication that it intends to join the fray between Israel and Iran.

Israeli forces have continued to occupy several border points in southern Lebanon and to carry out regular airstrikes on what Israel says are Hezbollah facilities since the ceasefire.

“Of course I am against the Israeli occupation, and Iran is an Islamic country standing up to it,” said Hussein al-Walid, 34, a welder in the southern coastal city of Sidon.

Iran's axis

Despite the dramatic scenes of buildings reduced to rubble in Israel, Tehran and other Iranian cities have taken a worse pounding and other regional countries, including Lebanon, could still be pulled into the conflict.

Caroline Rose, a director at the Washington-based New Lines Institute think tank said that while it seems “clear that Iran-backed proxies across the region, particularly Hezbollah, just do not have the capacity” to enter the fray, Israel could decide to expand the scope of its offensive beyond Iran.

One of the goals announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to eliminate Iran’s “axis of terrorism” - the coalition of Tehran-backed armed groups across the region known as the “Axis of Resistance.”

That goal “is ambiguous and offers Israel the operational space to expand this war to countries it deems are hosting Iran-backed proxies, no matter how weak they may be,” Rose said.

Al-Walid shrugged off the possibility of a new war in Lebanon.

“The war is already present in Lebanon,” he said. “Israel isn’t abiding by the agreement and is striking every day.”

Hassan Shreif, a 26-year-old student from the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a strong base of support, said that after last year’s war in Lebanon and the heavy losses suffered by the group, many of its supporters “were clearly anguished and didn’t feel vindicated.”

“So, anything, even a window breaking in Tel Aviv, is (now) a victory for them,” he said. Every time Iranian missiles pass overhead, he said, people in the area break out in shouts of jubilation.

At the same time, Shreif said, “there’s always a silent group hugging the wall as we say in Arabic, treading carefully and praying we stay out of it.”