Woman uses AI to help civilians in war-torn Lebanon

Last fall, Hania Zataari, a mechanical engineer working for Lebanon’s Ministry of Industry, put her skills to use when war broke out in the country. From Sidon, South Lebanon, he created a chatbot on WhatsApp that facilitated access to much-needed help.

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

On September 23, Israel dramatically escalated its attack on the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which has been facing 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 nearly 20 years.

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

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

He wanted to help those people who did not receive direct government support. Using her programming skills, Hania created an “aidbot” to bridge the gap between demand and supply of aid.

Aidbot is a chatbot – a type of AI 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 names and locations.

This information is then entered into a Google spreadsheet to help Hania and her volunteer team of friends and family distribute aid such as food, blankets, mattresses, medicine and clothing.

Hania used her spare time to build the bot using the Callbell.eu website to contact customers on Meta’s platforms that companies usually use, such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook messenger.

He explained that the bot, which is still in use today, makes the distribution of help more efficient by reducing the time spent responding to requests for help via WhatsApp.

“I’m not really interested in knowing their names. I need to know where they are so I can manage the delivery,” he says.

Take, for example, a request for infant formula. According to Hania, the boot will depend on the baby’s age and the amount needed so that she and her team can provide it.

The project, he says, is financed by donations from Lebanese living abroad. He has created a publicly available dashboard to record what the project has spent on and how much aid he and his team have distributed.

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

Last October, 47-year-old Khaldoun Abbas and his family fled their home in Najjarieh after receiving calls from the IDF asking them to leave for their safety.

Seventeen people, aged between nine and 78, slept under one roof in a rented three-bed apartment in Sidon.

According to Khaldoun, he, his wife and their children, as well as his brother’s family, slept on mattresses ordered by the aidbot in the hallway of the apartment. They also asked for blankets, food and washing machines.

Unlike his neighbors, he has not been able to return to his home. It was destroyed 11 days later in an Israeli attack. The IDF told the BBC it “hit a terrorist infrastructure”.

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

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

Sidon has a longstanding reputation for hosting internally displaced persons driven from their homes on the Lebanon-Israel border.

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

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health says nearly 4,000 people have died and more than a million have been displaced. The ministry does not say how many of these are civilians or combatants.

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

Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire last November. Despite some skirmishes, it has been largely maintained. But local people say support has not improved.

International NGO Islamic Relief told the BBC that “conflict, destruction and evacuation orders have fueled ongoing displacement in Lebanon, which has made it difficult to assess and address the needs of the population amid changing circumstances.”

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

Bilal Merie, a volunteer who works with Hania, says that many of the problems they face are due to “high demand but low supply” of help.

It is due to the deep economic turmoil that has gripped the country since 2019, which means that the Lebanese government has had to rely on financing from creditors and aid organizations for assets.

But NGOs are also feeling the crisis. Unicef ​​Lebanon says it has just 20% of the funding it needs, “continuing to face a huge funding gap”, meaning the charity can’t help families when they need it most.

In a country plagued by financial problems and war, can this helpbot make a tangible difference?

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

He says that the cultural context used is commendable. This is knowing “the ways that people are using to talk to each other and to get to know 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 a lot of the time is the standard cookie-cutter approach.

“Local designers, local translators, trusted human interlocutors and elements of that system are what make digital tools useful,” he says.

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

Additional reporting by Ahmed Abdallah