Lebanon’s queue jumping affair threatens World Bank vaccine lifeline

Lebanon’s queue jumping affair threatens World Bank vaccine lifeline

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It was a Covid-19 vaccine scandal that graft-weary Lebanon was braced for “” yet its brazenness struck a nerve. In the second week of a national vaccine rollout, 16 lawmakers and a handful of staffers were inoculated with the BioNTech/Pfizer jab at the Lebanese parliament; days earlier, president Michel Aoun, his wife and 10 members of his entourage took the shots.

This means politicians were among the lucky ones to get less than 30,000 vaccines administered so far in Lebanon, home to more than 6m people, including some 1.5m refugees. Last week's revelations have fuelled angry accusations of queue-jumping by the political elite. Thalia Arawi, ethics officer for the national vaccination program, resigned. Abdul Rahman al-Bizri, the vaccination committee's head, denounced a "violation of the vaccination process that cannot be tolerated.“

The affair looked like another example of the bad governance and alleged corruption that has made Lebanese distrust their leaders, and the international community unwilling to donate to the hard-hit Middle Eastern country.

"For decades, we've been seeing international aid come into the county and then be siphoned off to politicians and their cronies,“ said Aya Majzoub, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.