Video

For more than a year, Umm Haitham and her children have lived in this school, a crumbling classroom they share with other displaced Palestinian families in the Beddawi refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Their homes in the nearby Nahr al-Bared refugee camp were destroyed in five months of fighting last year between al Qaida-linked Islamists and the Lebanese Army. The camp's reconstruction is barely underway and progress is slow. For Nahr al Bared's 40,000-strong population, it's a frustrating time. (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) DISPLACED NAHR AL-BARED REFUGEE UMM HAITHAM SAYING: ''I want them to rebuild the camp, so that we can come and go as we like.'' (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) DISPLACED NAHR AL-BARED REFUGEE SHEHADEH ZAIDAN SAYING: They have been telling us they want to rebuild but they have not rebuilt anything yet. All they do is give us caravans. The caravans are hot, there are scorpions and snakes there, and we can't live in them. The 'old camp' area - where most of the destruction took place - is still out of bounds, a source of bitter resentment among the refugees. International donors are meeting in Vienna to solicit funds for the rebuilding of Nahr al-Bared and six surrounding Lebanese communities, which were affected by the fighting. The European Union says it will offer more the 12 million dollars - last year a similar conference raised $20 million dollars. But it's not enough. The Lebanese government estimates the cost of rebuilding the camp to be nearly half a billion dollars, a project that will take at least three years to complete. Helen Long, Reuters