Escalating since October 2019, the political and economic crisis is driving Lebanon to the brink of bankruptcy. The tragic situation has been exacerbated by a gigantic explosion of chemicals stored in Beirut’s seaport in 2020. The middle class has virtually ceased to exist. Educated citizens are fleeing hyperinflation, unemployment which rises every month, power cuts and fuel shortages.
09.03.2026
“You’re so lovely to remember me,” Roger says, his voice trembling with emotion. Each word is already soaked with tears — a mixture of gratitude and fear. “Good Factory, thanks to you I’m not alone. The shelling is terrible. The explosions are deafening, but I’m okay. In our neighborhood, for now, it’s still safe.”
Roger is staying with a friend in Beirut, in the district of Jal El Dib, which so far has not been targeted by the Israeli army. But right outside their windows, dramatic scenes are unfolding. Thousands of residents from a neighboring district are hurriedly leaving their homes. On the phone, besides the man’s breaking voice, we can hear car horns and the shouts of panicked Lebanese people searching for a way out of the city.
Roger and Lebanon are like brothers. They share many wounds from the past that are still bleeding, and they are brought to their knees by the same blows again and again. The past few days have weakened not only Lebanon’s situation, but also Roger’s chances in the battle he is fighting against cancer.
“There are no more oncology meds for you in Lebanon,” he heard at the hospital.
The doctor shrugged helplessly and tried to say something comforting, but Roger could no longer hear him. His ears reacted to the previous sentence as if to a powerful explosion. He shook his head involuntarily, trying to recover from the shock and silence the ringing splitting his head.
“No meds… but for how long? When should I come back?” Roger didn’t even know what questions to ask.
“We don’t know. The situation changes from hour to hour. There is nothing more I can do.”
While thousands of residents are fleeing the districts of Beirut that the Israeli army has threatened to level, as it did in Gaza, elderly and sick people remain in apartments on the upper floors, with no one left to help them. They have nowhere to run, because there is no escaping an untreated illness.
10.12.2025
Big declarations are signed under flashing cameras, in Geneva or New York. But human rights are most often violated quietly. In a cold apartment in Lebanon, where an elderly person living alone must choose between buying medicine or food, even though they worked their whole life and the crisis has taken everything from them. At […]
21.10.2025
“The good shepherd knows his sheep, and they know him.” A truth known since biblical times comes alive here, in practice, with Doumith—a good shepherd from Lebanon. The farmyard drops steeply down a Lebanese hillside. Beyond the fence, by an unpaved road, stands a building you reach by walking down steps so low that the […]
15.10.2025
We sit on a worn-out sofa in Beirut, listening to lessons very different from those usually celebrated on Teachers’ Day. Many of them begin with the explosion that tore a cathedral-sized hole in the city. They begin with banks that shut their doors and took people’s life savings. With wars that do not end with […]