MAG is responding to the conflict that has engulfed Lebanon by launching a campaign to spread life-saving risk education messages to guide people on how to stay safe during the conflict.
An estimated one million people – a fifth of the population – have now fled their homes to seek shelter from the aerial bombardments that have devastated communities, and more than 1,000 people have been killed, including children and other civilians, according to the country’s health ministry. Some 6,000-plus people have been injured.
MAG is now launching a new risk education campaign to advise people how to stay safe from unexploded ordnance that might be lodged in the rubble of towns, villages and cities.
Our senior staff are also engaging with the Lebanese authorities and international stakeholders, including other humanitarian organisations and donor governments, to ensure that the threat of explosive ordnance contamination is considered and integrated into wider relief efforts.
MAG has been delivering targeted and additional risk education programmes in Lebanon since the events of October 7th last year, which led to an increase in aerial attacks in the south of the country. In the last 12 months, our activities have reached some 2.6 million people through digital and face-to-face risk education sessions.
The new campaign is designed to help people living close to or in communities that have been hit by the recent aerial bombardments and will also target areas where internally displaced people have relocated in the last week. It will include Facebook messaging, the distribution of around 200,000 leaflets and TV advertising. The safety leaflets will be distributed to displaced people directly and through partnerships with organisations engaged in food and aid distribution.
In coordination with the national authorities, MAG will also be working with other humanitarian organisations to train their staff and volunteers on how to stay safe from unexploded ordnance.
MAG is also working with its partners in civil society to advocate for an immediate ceasefire, as it has done for the Gaza conflict.
MAG Chief Executive Darren Cormack said: “Our priority has been the safety and wellbeing of our staff but we are also committed to responding where we can to alleviate the suffering of civilians caught up in this conflict and to help reduce the risk of casualties.
“MAG has been working in Lebanon for almost a quarter of a century, conducting humanitarian mine action programmes that have delivered real benefits to communities, returning agricultural land to productive use, enabling the development of infrastructure and saving lives.
“We know from our experience globally that a significant proportion of the ordnance that has hit Lebanon will have failed to explode and will be lodged in the rubble, buried underground or simply lying on the surface. This poses a severe risk to the civilian population, may cost lives in the future, and will hamper reconstruction efforts and any return to normality when the conflict abates.
"Parts of Lebanon have now endured almost a year of aerial bombardments but the latest escalation obviously poses additional and acute risks to communities."
In Gaza, the Gaza health ministry estimated yesterday (Sunday 29th September) that the total number of Palestinians killed in the last year had risen to 41,595, with 96,251 injured. MAG continues to deliver risk education messages to residents there and currently has one staff member assisting with the safe passage of humanitarian convoys and advising other aid organisations on explosive ordnance risks.
Learn more about our work in Lebanon here and donate to MAG's Crisis Appeal here.
