The woman using AI to bring aid to civilians in war-torn Lebanon

Last fall, Hanya Zataari, a mechanical engineer who works for Lebanon’s Ministry of Industry, put her skills to use as the country’s war raged. Originally from Sidon, South Lebanon, she created a chatbot on WhatsApp that simplified access to much-needed help.

“They lost their houses, their savings, their jobs, everything they had built,” Hania says, referring to those forced from their homes by the war.

On September 23, Israel dramatically escalated its offensive against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, with which it has waged a spiraling conflict since Hezbollah attacked Israel in October 2023.

According to the Lebanese government, at least 492 people were killed in one of the deadliest days of conflict in Lebanon in almost 20 years.

Thousands of families fled to Sidon after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) struck what it said were 1,600 Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.

Chania says many displaced people sought shelter in schools and other public buildings, but many others who left their homes were forced to rent elsewhere or stay with family members.

She wanted to help precisely those people who did not receive direct support from the government. Drawing on her programming skills, Hania created an “aidbot” to bridge the gap between seeking and offering help.

Aidbot is a chatbot – a type of artificial intelligence system designed to communicate with its users online – that connects to WhatsApp. It is programmed to ask simple questions about the types of help people need, along with their names and locations.

This information is then entered into a Google spreadsheet, which 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 spare time to build the bot using the Callbell.eu website, which is commonly used by businesses to interact with customers on Meta platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook messenger.

She explains that the bot, which is still in use today, makes aid distribution more efficient because it reduces the time she spends responding to requests for help over WhatsApp.

“I really don’t care to know their names. I just need to know where they are so I can manage the delivery,” she says.

Take, for example, a request for baby milk. Hania says the bot will ask for the baby’s age and the amount needed so she and her team can provide it.

The project, she says, is funded by donations coming from Lebanese living abroad. She created a publicly accessible dashboard to record what project money was spent on and how much aid she and her team distributed.

At the time of writing, they have delivered 78 food packages to families of 5 or 10, 900 mattresses and 323 blankets in Sidon and other parts of Lebanon.

Last October, Khaldun Abbas, 47, and his family fled their homes in Najariya after receiving calls from the IDF urging them to leave for their own safety.

Seventeen people, aged nine to 78, slept under one roof in a rented three-room apartment in Sidon.

Haldun says he, his wife and their children, and his brother’s family slept on mattresses they requested with the help of the helper robot in the hallway of the apartment. They also asked for blankets, food and cleaning supplies.

Unlike his neighbors, he was unable to return to his home. It was destroyed in a confirmed Israeli strike 11 days later. The IDF told the BBC it had “hit a terrorist infrastructure”.

When we put this allegation to Khaldoun, he denied having any ties to Hezbollah or any other party.

“This is not the first time that Sidon has opened its doors to displaced people,” Hania explains, referring to the wave of people who have arrived in the city.

Sidon has a long-standing reputation for hosting internally displaced people driven from their homes along the Lebanon-Israel border.

The latest conflict began in October 2023 after the war between Israel and Hamas spilled over into Lebanon, when Hezbollah, Hamas’ ally, fired rockets at Israel in support of Gaza.

Lebanon’s health ministry says nearly 4,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced. The ministry did not say how many of them were civilians or combatants.

In Israel, about 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel and authorities say more than 80 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed.

A ceasefire was agreed between Israel and Lebanon last November. Despite some clashes, he was largely supported. But people on the ground say aid delivery has not improved.

The international NGO Islamic Relief told the BBC that “conflict, destruction and evacuation orders have fueled ongoing displacement in Lebanon, making it difficult to assess and address the needs of the population amid the changing situation”.

But it is not only war that hinders the distribution of aid.

Bilal Meri, a volunteer working with Hanya, says many of the problems they face are due to the “high demand but insufficient supply” of help.

He attributes it to the deep economic turmoil that has gripped the country since 2019. thus far, meaning the Lebanese government has had to rely heavily on financing from creditors and humanitarian organizations for goods.

But even NGOs feel the crisis. Unicef ​​Lebanon says that with only 20% of the funding it needs, it “continues to face a huge funding gap”, meaning the charity is unable to support families when they are most in need. need.

In a country overwhelmed by financial problems and war, can this helper robot make a tangible difference?

This is the first time researcher John Bryant of the Overseas Development Institute think tank has heard of a chatbot being used in such a way in the humanitarian sector.

He says the cultural context in which it is used is commendable. That is, with the knowledge of “the channels that people use to talk to and meet each other in their own language.”

However, he is unsure of its scalability, as what works in Lebanon cannot easily be replicated in other parts of the world.

“What technology offers most of the time is a standard, cookie-cutter approach.

“It’s the local designers, the local translators, the trusted human interlocutors and elements in that system that elevate the digital tools into something useful,” he says.

Aidbot may not be able to offer a solution to all of Lebanon’s problems, but for the families who use it, it has made life a little easier.

Additional reporting by Ahmed Abdallah