“It is the future of Lebanon that is at stake.“
French President Emmanuel Macron
International efforts to help Lebanon as it endures the terrible effects of the August 4th explosion have not abated. On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron and the UN co-hosted a virtual conference for this cause.
The donors’ conference aims to gather urgent international aid for Lebanon.
Macron, who was the first world leader to visit the country after the devastating blast, said in the opening remarks of the live-streamed conference: “We must act quickly and efficiently so that this aid goes directly to where it is needed.”
Participants in the conference, he noted, “will face the repercussions of the Beirut Port disaster alongside the Lebanese … An international response must be built under the coordination of the United Nations.”
The French President made headlines when he walked with the traumatized people on the streets of Mar Mikhail and Gemmayze earlier this week, after landing in Beirut, where he promised that French aid would not go to “corrupt hands.”
During the UN-backed conference, he urged the Lebanese government to act responsibly to safeguard Lebanon’s future, warning that the consequences of failing to do so will be dire on the country.
“It is up to the authorities of the country to act so that the country does not sink, and to respond to the aspirations that the Lebanese people are expressing right now, legitimately, in the streets of Beirut,” Macron declared.
The aspirations in question were loudly expressed by enormous crowds of Lebanese protesters who, after taking over the streets of Central Beirut with their demonstrations, broke into several ministry buildings in a new form of challenge to the authorities.
The Saturday evening protests turned into violent clashes with riot police, which ended with over 200 people injured, and an Internal Security Forces officer dead.
“We must all work together to ensure that neither violence nor chaos prevails,” Emmanuel Macron stressed in the conference.
He warned: “It is the future of Lebanon that is at stake.”
