Wednesday, August 23, 2006

War wiped out 15 years of Lebanese recovery - UNDP

Wednesday, August 23, 2006
War wiped out 15 years of Lebanese recovery - UNDP

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

GENEVA: Lebanon's 15-year economic and social recovery from the Civil War was wiped out in the recent Israeli offensive against Hizbullah, the UN development agency said Tuesday. "The damage is such that the last 15 years of work on reconstruction and rehabilitation, following the previous problems that Lebanon experienced, are now annihilated," said Jean Fabre, a spokesman for the UN Development Program (UNDP).

Lebanon's relatively healthy progress toward the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which cover a range of social and economic targets, "have been brought back to zero," he told journalists. "Fifteen years of work have been wiped out in a month." Fabre estimated that overall economic losses for Lebanon from the month-long conflict between Israel and Hizbullah totaled "at least $15 billion, if not more." Lebanese authorities estimated last week that direct structural damage inflicted by the offensive reached $3.6 billion, including 15,000 housing units, 80 bridges and 94 roads destroyed or damaged. About 35,000 homes and businesses were destroyed in the conflict, while a quarter of the country's road bridges or overpasses were shattered, according to the UNDP's initial estimate UN agencies said it would take weeks to assess the full extent of the damage in South Lebanon and Southern Beirut.

The need for clean water and sanitation, to make safe unexploded munitions and build shelters are the most urgent issues, aid agencies said Tuesday. - AFP

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