France pledges €15 million to Lebanese schools crippled by crisis

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by france24.com -- France's visiting foreign minister on Friday pledged €15 million ($17 million) in aid to Lebanon's schools, which have been hit hard by the country's economic meltdown. France will not abandon Lebanese youth, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters as he visited a school in Mechref, south of Beirut, on the third and final day of his trip to Lebanon. The French financial assistance will go to a network of over 50 French and Francophone schools in the country. The announcement comes a day after Le Drian scolded Lebanon's leadership for failing to take the measures he said are necessary to save the country from collapse. Lebanon's education sector has been hit hard by the crisis, with schools forced to let teachers and administrators go and many facing the risk of closure. Parents, struggling to pay private school fees, are increasingly enrolling their children in already overcrowded public schools.

'On the verge of the abyss'

The economic crisis has impacted almost all facets of life in Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country long considered a middle-income state. Since last year, unemployment has risen and poverty deepened, as foreign currency dried up and the local currency tumbled to lose more than 80 percent of its value against the dollar. Le Drian, who arrived here late Wednesday, said France could only help Lebanon face the crisis if Lebanese officials do their part, urging them to introduce much-needed reforms. Le Drian is the first senior Western official to visit the struggling country. In stern public messages, he urged Lebanese officials to go through with an audit of the country's central bank, reform a bloated and highly indebted electricity sector, and maintain an independent judiciary. France is the former colonial power in Lebanon and has previously organised conferences that pledged assistance to Lebanon but demanded reforms to the public sector and governance. “Lebanon is on the verge of the abyss. But there are ways on the table to fix this,” he said Friday during a visit to a school in Mechref district.

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French foreign minister in Lebanon: No reform? No aid

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by Timour Azhari -- .aljazeera.com -- Beirut - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said Lebanese politicians are preventing the disbursal of much-needed aid to the crisis-hit country by failing to implement solutions "that have already been known for a long time". "France is ready to fully mobilise alongside Lebanon and to mobilise all of its partners, but this requires serious and credible reform measures to be implemented. Concrete actions are long-overdue," Le Drian said during a joint news conference with Lebanese Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti on Thursday. In Beirut on a two-day official visit, Le Drian likened potential French and international aid to Lebanon to divine intervention. "You may be familiar with the French expression, 'help yourself and God will help you.' What I want to say to officials in Lebanon today is: 'Help yourself and France and its partners will help you'," he said.

The international community has over the last 20 years pledged nearly $24bn to Lebanon for economic aid and development projects at four donor conferences. The most recent conference in 2018 saw pledges of $11bn, conditional on reforms to the country's ailing electricity sector, modernising laws and reducing the country's public debt. Little progress was made and Lebanon is now sinking into a deep crisis characterised by currency depreciation, steep inflation, rising poverty, unemployment and growing instability. The government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab, appointed by the country's establishment after a massive anti-government uprising toppled his predecessor in October, is seeking some $20bn in aid - half from the International Monetary Fund and half from international donors rallied by France. But the government has faltered with little popular support and negotiations with the IMF have been impeded by disagreements and political bickering. Protesters "took to the streets to mark the thirst for change, to mark the desire for transparency, the fight against corruption, and better governance of a whole people. Unfortunately, this appeal has so far not been heard," Le Drian said.

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How Lebanon saw the 1984 killing of Middle East scholar and AUB President Malcolm Kerr

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by arabnews.com -- LEILA HATOUM -- BEIRUT: On Jan. 18, 1984, Dr. Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut (AUB), stepped into a hallway leading to his office on the sprawling campus in the Lebanese capital. It was a rainy Wednesday morning. The civil war had been raging in the country for nine years. Suddenly two armed men appeared, as if from nowhere, and opened fire on 52-year-old Kerr. He was shot twice in the back of the head and died instantly. The killers fled and were never identified. In a telephone call to news agency AFP, the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), a Shiite militia backed by Iran, claimed responsibility for the killing. It cited the US military presence in Lebanon as the reason. American soldiers were part of a four-nation peacekeeping force created in 1982 during a US-brokered ceasefire between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

Speaking to Arab News from southern California, Kerr’s widow, Ann, recalled that terrible day, the events of which remain fresh in her memory after 36 years. “The grief is an ongoing thing,” she said. “You live with the loss and the loss assumes a place in your heart.” Ann met her husband while they were both students at AUB in the 1950s. She was on a study trip from Occidental College in Los Angeles, he was studying for a master’s degree in Arabic studies. To them, AUB “represented the best of what the US had to offer,” Ann said. Her husband, an American citizen, was born and raised in Lebanon and educated in the US. His parents had taught at AUB, so it was close to his heart. He returned to Lebanon on many occasions, eventually taking up further studies and teaching assignments at the university. An authority on the Middle East and the Arab world, in 1982 he was offered the job of president at the prestigious institution. Ann blames Iran and Hezbollah for his murder, as the IJO is said to have been the forerunner to Hezbollah, which was formed in 1985. “It is pretty clear that (Hezbollah was responsible) because in those days they were targeting visible westerners (such as) journalists and professors,” she said. “You might remember that David Dodge was kidnapped before Malcolm was assassinated.”

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Lebanon hires US firm for central bank probe

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by arabnews.com -- NAJIA HOUSSARI -- BEIRUT: The Lebanese government has hired Alvarez & Marsal, a New York-based professional services firm, to carry out a forensic audit of central bank accounts since 2015 amid claims finances have been mismanaged in the corruption-plagued country. Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni asked for a week to prepare documents to sign the contract for the audit, which could take between three and six months. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has called for an audit since March, following the country’s first-ever default on a $1.2 billion eurobond payment. The process will attempt to identify the cause of the financial and monetary crisis and the level of foreign exchange reserves.

A Ministry of Finance source told Arab News that the finance minister “submitted a list of six companies so the Cabinet can choose one to conduct the forensic audit, after refusing to contract Kroll because of its alleged links with Israel, with whom Lebanon is at war.” The source added: “The Cabinet voted for Alvarez & Marsal, although the cost of contracting the firm is higher than the cost of contracting Kroll. It will have a crew in Lebanon consisting of two directors and nine associates at a cost of $2.2 million, while Kroll’s financial offer amounted to only half a million.”

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Lebanese schools threatened with closure hold out hope for French support

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by thenational.ae -- Sunniva Rose -- One of the handful of historic buildings in downtown Beirut to have survived the 1975-1990 civil war, the school of Saint Anne of Besançon, may not open again in September. A quarter of its usual 800 students have not enrolled yet. “We keep changing scenarios to adapt to the situation. We are living day by day” said its director, Sister Myrna Farah. Compounded by confinement measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Lebanon’s worst-ever economic crisis threatens the survival of the country’s private schools, where 70 per cent of Lebanese children study. With the government increasingly struggling to provide basic services such as electricity, Lebanese schools, and particularly French-speaking ones, are placing their hopes in former colonialist power France. French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who arrived in Beirut on Wednesday evening for a 36-hour visit, is expected to add detail to previous announcements made by the French government about Lebanon’s education sector. “I hope that [his visit] will alleviate the financial blockade that we are under,” said Sister Farah, referring to the cash crisis that forced local banks to limit access to the dollar since November. Earlier this year, French president Emmanuel Macron said that France would support Christian francophone schools in Lebanon, which represent 11 per cent of the country’s 2,854 schools, as part of a regional support programme.

Additionally, 53 schools accredited by the French Ministry of Education will receive interest-free loans and emergency scholarships for non-French families, depending on their needs. Lots of families, even those comparably well-off compared to most in Lebanon, are hoping to receive help. Nayla, who declined to give her family name, has not paid the fees for her two children’s last quarter at school yet. “It’s not that I don’t have the money, but I’m just so worried about the situation” she said, breaking down as she spoke on the phone. “We don’t know what will happen. I spend my time trying to buy cheap meat and beans to freeze. I’d rather keep the money for the basics,” she added. In June, inflation hit 90 per cent, and analysts expect it to worsen. “The economic collapse is happening in an exponential way,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre. “What comes out of it cannot be predicted, but what we can predict is greater inflation and that the lira will continue to deteriorate,” she added. The local currency has lost over 80 per cent of its value on the black market since September. The rapid deterioration of living conditions shocked Sister Farah.

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Beirut university chief says firing 850 staff should have been better managed

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by thenational.ae -- Sunniva Rose -- The American University of Beirut should have better managed the firing of 850 staff members last Friday, the president of Lebanon’s most prestigious university said in a letter to staff and students. Private security and members of the Lebanese military were posted around the AUB Medical Centre as the staff were given letters ending their employment and escorted out, many of them in tears. Now, the institution’s president, Fadlo Khuri, has said the “exceptionally difficult” week could have been better managed. “The reality is that letting this many people go from the AUB family was never going to be easy,” Mr Khuri wrote. “The manner of departures, especially at AUBMC, could and should have been better handled, and some confusion and pain could have been avoided.” Employees organised a protest outside the medical centre on Monday afternoon.

Pictures on social media showed protesters holding banners that read “I won’t leave” and “I will not accept this humiliation”. Protesters read out the annual salaries of Mr Khuri and other top AUB officials, which they said added up to nearly $1 million a year, while visibly upset former employees broke down in tears. On Friday, interviews with the former employees went viral on Lebanese social media. “My mother has cancer. My brother died," a sobbing woman said. "I had nothing but this institution. What will I do now?” The layoffs took place amid large numbers of army and riot police, causing outrage on social media. Some Twitter users called the university's management “cowards".

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