Of the million Syrian refugees who now occupy neighbouring Lebanon, 80 per cent are women and children with little or no access to employment, meaning street begging is rife.
In fact, it’s one of the more visible images of Lebanon's refugee crisis.
Streets and intersections are littered with the faces of desperation and many of them are children.
The Beirut-based UNHCR said with so many manifestations of the Syrian crisis in Lebanon, the social problem of begging is a virtual afterthought.
No statistics are taken, there are few (if any) interventions and little is done to counter the cartels seeking to exploit those resorting to beg.
”It opens the potential for abuse because in some cases people are doing this independently but we hear through our partners that in some cases there might be more exploitative rings at work which are using people to beg,” Matthew Saltmarsh, from UNHCR Beirut, said.
In some instances, the “rings” or cartels provide protection for those begging on the street for a share of the proceeds. In other cases, businessmen hire out wheelchairs so clients can maximise productivity.
Beirut-based businessman Abdul Rahman has a small fleet of wheelchairs he hires out mostly to Syrian refugees.
“If a person is not in a wheelchair they might get 1000 [Lebanese pounds] but if the person is in a wheelchair they might get 5000 or 10,000, Mr Rahman said.
In many cases, the chair can mean the difference between earning any money at all.
Sleiman Khayzaran is the full-time carer for his profoundly disabled 13-year-old daughter Ghina. The pair fled war-ravaged Syria two years ago, and now live in the Beirut neighbourhood of J'nah. He rents a wheelchair in order to beg and earn at least some income.
“I feel embarrassed when I take her because people wonder why I do this, but if I could work, I wouldn't take her out,” Mr Khayzaran said.
But not all those who hire the chairs are disabled. Another J’nar resident, Syrian refugee Raffi, hires a chair two to three days each week.
He is clearly able-bodied and said he understood the conduct was deceptive but had no options in order to earn money.
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Abdul Rahman denied he hired the chair to Raffi.
“I don't give wheelchairs to any able-bodied people. I only give the wheelchairs to handicapped people,” he said.
Matthew Saltmarsh from the UNHCR said begging also threatened to further unsettle the tense relationship between the host-nation Lebanon and the million Syrian refugees who live there.
“The fact that it's more visible…it adds to tensions in the local community because when they start seeing more beggars on the street they start focusing on the fact they have a very large population of Syrian refugees here and they're a small country which itself has serious social problems,” Mr Saltmarsh said.
