Carolyn Bazzi/Jinha AgencyLast fall, Hania Zaatari, a mechanical engineer working for the Lebanese Ministry of Industry, put her skills to use as war raged in the country. Hailing from the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, she created a WhatsApp chat program that made it easier to access much-needed aid.
“They lost their homes, their savings, their work, and everything they built,” Haniyeh says, referring to those forced by the war to leave their homes.
On September 23, Israel significantly escalated its offensive against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, with which it has been locked in an escalating conflict since Hezbollah attacked Israel in October 2023.
According to the Lebanese government, at least 492 people were killed in one of the bloodiest days of conflict in Lebanon in nearly 20 years.
Thousands of families fled to Sidon after the IDF struck what it said were 1,600 Hezbollah strongholds inside Lebanon.
Haniyeh says that many of the displaced took refuge in schools and other public buildings, but many of those who fled their homes were forced to rent other places or stay with family members.
It was these people who did not receive direct support from the government that she wanted to help. Relying on her programming skills, Hania created “aidbot” to narrow the gap between supply and demand for aid.
aidbot is a chatbot – a type of artificial intelligence system designed to communicate with its users online – and is linked to WhatsApp. It is programmed to ask simple questions about the types of help people need as well as their names and locations.
This information is then recorded in a Google spreadsheet that Hania and her team of unpaid volunteers, made up of friends and family, can access to distribute aid such as food, blankets, mattresses, medicine and clothing.
Hania used her free time to build a bot using Callbell.eu, which businesses typically use to communicate with customers on meta platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook messenger.
She explains that the bot, which is still used today, makes aid distribution more efficient because it reduces the amount of time spent responding to requests for help via WhatsApp.
“I'm not really interested in knowing their names. I just want to know where they are so I can manage the delivery,” she says.
Take, for example, ordering baby formula. Hania says the robot will ask you about the age of the child and the quantity required so that she and her team can provide it.
She says that the project is funded by donations coming from Lebanese living abroad. She created a publicly available dashboard to record what the project spent money on and how much aid she and her team distributed.
As of the time of writing, they have delivered 78 food baskets to families of 5 or 10 people, 900 mattresses, and 323 blankets in Sidon and other parts of Lebanon.
Last October, 47-year-old Khaldoun Abbas and his family fled their homes in Najariya after they received calls from the Israel Defense Forces urging them to leave for their safety.
17 people, between the ages of 9 and 78, are sleeping under one roof in a rented three-bed apartment in Sidon.
Khaldoun says he, his wife and their children, as well as his brother's family, were sleeping on mattresses they ordered using a help robot located in the apartment's entrance. They also asked for blankets, food and detergents.
Unlike his neighbours, he was unable to return to his home. It was destroyed in a confirmed Israeli raid 11 days later. The Israeli army told the BBC that it had “bombed terrorist infrastructure.”
When we raised this allegation to Khaldoun, he denied that he had any relationship with Hezbollah or any other party.
“This is not the first time Sidon has opened its doors to displaced people,” Haniyeh explains, referring to the wave of displaced people who have arrived in the city.
Sidon has a long-standing reputation for receiving internally displaced people expelled from their homes along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
The latest conflict began in October 2023 after the war between Israel and Hamas spilled into Lebanon when Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, fired rockets into Israel in support of Gaza.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health says nearly 4,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced. The ministry did not mention the number of civilians or fighters among them.
In Israel, about 60,000 people were evacuated from northern Israel, and authorities say more than 80 soldiers and 47 civilians were killed.
Last November, a ceasefire was agreed between Israel and Lebanon. Despite some skirmishes it was largely held. But people on the ground say aid delivery has not improved.
“Conflict, destruction and evacuation orders have fueled ongoing displacement in Lebanon, making it difficult to assess and meet the needs of the population amid the changing situation,” the non-governmental organization Islamic Relief International told the BBC.
But it is not only the war that hinders the distribution of aid.
Bilal Marai, a volunteer working with Haniyeh, says many of the problems they face are due to “high demand and low supply” for aid.
He attributes this to the deep economic turmoil that has swept the country since 2019, meaning the Lebanese government has had to rely heavily on funding from creditors and aid organizations to obtain goods.
But even NGOs are feeling the pinch. UNICEF Lebanon says that with only 20% of the funding it needs, it “still faces a huge funding gap”, meaning the charity is unable to support families when they need it most.
In a country ravaged by financial problems and war, can this help robot make a tangible difference?
This is the first time researcher John Bryant of the Overseas Development Institute, a think tank, has heard of a chatbot being used in this way in the humanitarian sector.
He says the cultural context in which it is used is commendable. That is, by knowing “the channels people use to talk to each other and meet each other in their own language.”
However, he is not sure about scalability, because what works in Lebanon cannot be easily replicated in other parts of the world.
“What technology provides a lot of the time is the standard cookie-cutter approach.
“It's the local designers, the local translators, the trusted human interlocutors and the elements within that system that elevate digital tools into something useful,” he says.
The aid robot may not be able to provide the solution to all of Lebanon's problems, but it has made life a little easier for the families that use it.
Additional reporting by Ahmed Abdullah
