UNFPA published its latest situation report on the Lebanon crisis on 31 August 2026, covering the month to 8 August. On 6 August, 25,503 people were still displaced across 242 collective shelters, 53 per cent of them women and girls. They told UNFPA they were getting limited information, and inadequate notice, about those shelters closing and about where else they could go. The agency says that raises the risk of people being displaced a second time.
People with disabilities are named in the report among those facing the sharpest risks, alongside women and girls, adolescents and older people. It lists overcrowding, damaged housing, a lack of privacy and gender-based violence, plus financial hardship and barriers to essential services. Three hospitals and 27 primary health centres remain closed. UNFPA has 16 per cent of the US$25 million it appealed for, and says the shortfall limits how many people it can reach.
Word that a shelter is closing rarely arrives as a letter. It moves between neighbours, through community groups and messaging apps, and out from whoever was standing nearby when it was said. Someone with a disability who can’t move easily around a crowded shelter, and has no credit on their phone, is outside all of that. We believe a phone that already works, used for everyday life, is what keeps a person inside those conversations. It’s also a line out that doesn’t run through anyone else — they can call an aid worker or a relative themselves.
Calling for Help exists to close that gap. Digital inequality leaves refugees with disabilities cut off from help that already exists, so we send free mobile top-ups every month and the person uses them to reach whoever is best placed to help — a caseworker, a clinic, a local organisation, their own family.
We believe it is the most cost-effective humanitarian aid there is. Nobody has to be employed to find them and nobody has to travel: the credit arrives on the number they already use, once they have passed AI-based identity and anti-fraud checks. The pilot has a limited number of places while we find out what it changes.
If you have a disability and are living as a refugee, or you support someone who is, apply to the pilot. To follow what we find, join the newsletter.