Back to Contents The Yalla Care Coalition conducted a study on the needs of the LGBTIQA+ community in Beirut and published the results in December 2021. It does not explicitly refers to stateless Palestinians but mentions that the study included “undocumented residents in Lebanon”: “The disintegration of the quality of life in Lebanon has disproportionately hit marginalized communities and has harshly affected all aspects of their living conditions. These marginalized communities include the LGBTIQ+ community, women and girls, migrant domestic workers, refugees and undocumented residents in Lebanon, people with disabilities, among others. The living conditions before the economic collapse and political deadlock were in abysmal conditions only to be acutely worsened by the systemic oppression and failure of the state institutions.” (Source: Yalla Care Coalition, “Study on the needs of the LGBTIQA+ community in Beirut, 2021”, December 2021, p. 12) Without mentioning LGBTQI+ stateless Palestinians as an explicit group in their study, Oxfam collected information on the specific struggles of queer refugees in Lebanon, among others the impact of “checkpoints on the mobility of trans people whose gender identity does not match their identification documents and queer refugees who do not have legal permits.” “Specifically, queer individuals who are non-Lebanese such as refugees and migrant workers were more likely to experience challenges that affect their access to shelter, such as lower opportunities to generate income and meet rent payments, higher risk of eviction, and higher risk of discrimination by landlords based on their nationality. This is concerning because many non-Lebanese queer individuals were placed in difficult situations and were “in limbo” as a result of the crises, by not being able to work, receive support, go out of their houses, afford rent, feel safe in public spaces, or even go back to their country due to travel restrictions. […] However, it is important to note that the impact of the crisis was not linear across different members of the community. According to the interviews with queer individuals, CSOs and informal aids groups, trans individuals, gender queer individuals, and queer refugees seem to be the most affected by the series of crises. “We are stifled from all angles. We cannot go out, we cannot work, we cannot receive proper support, we do not have safe spaces to exist” said one of the interview participants about their experience as a queer refugee in Lebanon. Trans individuals who face systemic and longstanding barriers to formal education and employment are often forced to work in low-income jobs in the informal sector, and many of them resort to sex work to make ends meet. During the pandemic, many informal businesses struggled to survive, and demand for sex work services sharply decreased due to significant decrease in expandable income, making an already dire situation even more devastating. Similarly, queer refugees, who had been struggling for years with legal restrictions that bar them from the formal job market and limit their mobility, found in this crisis another burden that made meeting their most basic needs even more difficult.” (Source: Oxfam, “Queer Community in Crisis: Trauma, Inequality & Vulnerability”, July 2021, p. 15) Based on a confidential source, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported in 2021 that: “5.1.2 LGBTI One source indicates that Palestinian LGBTI people who openly admit their sexuality experience discrimination in the refugee camps and are often turned away. The only places where Palestinian LGBTI people can live relatively safely outside the camps are in the non-conservative neighborhoods of Lebanon, for example in the capital Beirut. However, these neighborhoods are often Christian neighborhoods whose residents have a negative image of Palestinians. By living outside the camps, Palestinians also lose their social network that can provide protection. This also applies to LGBTI people who end up in a precarious situation and can no longer rely on their families or other contacts. Human Rights Watch (HRW) also reports the use of violence, abuse and unlawful pre-trial detention against transgender women at checkpoints.” (In-house translation. The translator is a native Dutch speaker) 15. Particular hardships faced by specific profiles of stateless Palestinians 140