Feature: Syrian refugees in Lebanon hope for end of displacement in 2016

As the world is celebrating the New Year, miseries of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon continue but with hopes that their displacement would end in 2016, amid talks for a political settlement to end the crisis that has engulfed their country since March 2011.

"All what we are concerned about is that the great powers would be able to reach a cease-fire in our country as a first step towards reaching a political solution to end the war," said Hussein Ahmadi, who fled from Aleppo neighborhoods three years ago to the eastern Bekaa region in Lebanon.

Ahmadi hoped the coming year would bring good news that the agony they have been living long enough would end, and so would their humiliation, bitterness, pain and tragedies.

For Ismat al-Madiha, another displaced woman from the Aleppo neighborhoods, the New Year is not a holiday "for smiles, happiness and hope," as she "lost all that in Syria."

"Our life is worrisome and all our prayers are to put an end to our displacement in the coming year," said Madiha.

"We are living in misery and agony for the past five years and bitterness refuses to leave us," said Samira Abou Daoud, who was displaced from Beit Jinn in southern Syria to the Shebaa town in southern Lebanon.

She described these days as "very hard on all the refugees who struggle to buy the smallest gift they can give to their children, but find it very hard to achieve."

"I could not find better than crying with my sister to welcome the holidays. Life has been so hard on us that we lost the desire to live. The holidays pass by our tent in a hurry and we hope that the winter season would pass fast as well," said Fawzia al-Abedi, another Syrian refugee.

According to the UN Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees have fled their war-torn country to Lebanon since the war began in March 2011.

The 2015 annual report on Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon, which was released last week by the World Food Program, the UNHCR and the UN Children's Fund, said about 70 percent of the refugees in Lebanon are now living below the extreme poverty line of 3.84 U.S. dollars per day.

Refugee families have become more reliant on food vouchers than they were in 2014. Limited resources have forced more than half of the surveyed refugee families, which doubles the number of last year, to spend less than expected to cover their most basic survival needs, the report said. Endit